One of the biggest mining farm in the United States operated by Northern Data’s subsidiary Whinstone Inc, has been sold to Riot Blockchain for €550 million ($654 million) in cash and shares.
€67 million was paid in cash to Northern Data which further acquired 11.8 million common shares of Riot Blockchain, amounting to €481 million at the current price.
That makes this the biggest known acquisition of a bitcoin mining site, with Northern Data stating they plan to use the proceeds to build eight new high-performance data centers (HPC) in Europe and America.
They already have such datancenters in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, with Northern Data claiming German engineering excellence.
“Northern Data has been able to create a versatile multi-site network of efficient HPC capabilities with an industry-leading sustainability focus by offering secured access to renewable energy sources.
With the proceeds from the transaction, we can accelerate our expansion significantly and reinforce the focus on value-accretive HPC services,” said Aroosh Thillainathan, CEO of Northern Data AG.
They claim their data centers use 90% renewable energy, with the now acquired facility based in Rockdale, Texas, being next to a running river where they have built their own hydro power as pictured above.
This acquisition so marking the debut of an underground mining boom of publicly traded miners who have seen their stock shares rise significantly.
Most of them thus are expanding aggressively particularly in Europe and America, challenging the long taken for granted dominance of China in bitcoin mining.
Their tapping into capital markets further allows them to hold the bitcoin, creating potentially a fundamental change in the dynamics of bitcoin mining and its effects on bitcoin’s price.
The manufacturing of actual asics however remains dominated by China, but there are signs that too is beginning to change as some capital rich miners start investing in western asics production.
Where western governments are concerned generally they’ve either said nothing or have tried to attractbitcoin miners which on the surface might look like a dirty industry, but it is actually cutting edge high tech, and sometimes even frontier technology.
That goes both for the actual computers and semiconductors but also you’d think where energy production and efficiency is concerned because mining is a ruthless zero sum game.
The gain of any miner is a loss for all other miners as they all competing for the same finite new coins, thus any efficiency, however small, is an edge.
You’d think thus if mining continues to gain traction in the advanced western world, some innovation in energy production will most likely come out of it as a mining farm nowadays is in great part an energy production site.
We should expect thus a new class of energy scientists to arise, and that by itself might give some competitive advantage.
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