Blockstream announced today that they had raised $210 million intending to expand their investment in Bitcoin mining. As such, Adam Back’s Canadian company now has a valuation of a whopping $3.2 billion.
Investors to have participated in this Series B round include British investment fund Baillie Gifford and iFinex, the company behind the Bitfinex exchange, and stablecoin Tether (USDt, Gold, and EURt).
A spokesperson for Baillie Gifford stated:
“Baillie Gifford is committed to backing transformational growth companies at their early stages. We have enormous respect for Blockstream’s founders and management team, and we believe its settlement network for bitcoin-based assets and securities has the potential to transform the design and operation of capital markets.”
In addition to this investment, Blockstream also announced today the acquisition of Spondoolies, a company that manufactures ASICs, the most popular mining machines.
Just Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, explained:
“Blockstream is bringing on-board the Spondoolies core team and acquiring related IP to launch the world’s first enterprise-class miner next year. The Spondoolies team’s pedigree in Bitcoin ASIC design and engineering complements our enterprise-class mining infrastructure, and will accelerate our continued expansion and decentralization of the Bitcoin mining space.”
Blockstream and Bitcoin mining
Blockstream is one of the longest-running and best-known companies dealing with Bitcoin and its blockchain. In addition to mining, Blockstream also came up with Liquid’s sidechain and the Green wallet.
Anyway, regarding Blockstream’s mining efforts, back in late June, Square had already invested $5 million in Bitcoin mining in a project together with Blockstream. In fact, the official announcement stated that the two companies had decided to collaborate to build an open-source and solar-powered bitcoin mining facility in the U.S. to mine the new BTCs in an environmentally friendly manner.
Instead, Blockstream had launched a Security Token Offering (STO) to sell BMN tokens linked to the hashrate produced by bitcoin miners working within the Blockstream company at the end of March. This way, investors would only have to buy the token and wait for the earnings instead of mining and purchasing the expensive equipment needed.
The profitability of Bitcoin mining
Over the past three weeks, revenues from bitcoin mining have grown significantly.
In fact, a recent report published by Glassnode states that the hashrate has increased by about 25% from its lows over the past two months, suggesting that it is back online with computing power equivalent to about 12.5% of the miners involved.
This growth helps miners to be able to reduce the amount of BTC they need to sell to finance their business, and this could therefore have a beneficial effect on the price of bitcoin itself.
