By
Mayowa Adebajo
April 15th, 2024
On Wednesday, December 20, GMO Group announced launching cryptocurrency mining in Northern Europe. The Group believes that bitcoin will develop into “new universal currency.”
GMO Group, Japan’s leading all-in provider of Internet services, has officially launched its cryptocurrency mining activity.
GMO Internet Group is a Japanese IT company that develops, operates and markets a full spectrum of Internet services for both the consumer and enterprise markets. Headquartered in Tokyo, the Group consists of more than 60 companies in 10 countries. Founded in the early 1990s, GMO first entered the cryptocurrency space with the opening of an exchange in May this year.
GMO has leant toward a number of cryptocurrency-related business lines, including an exchange platform opened in the spring and a Bitcoin-focused payroll service unveiled earlier this month. In September this year the company announced the launch of a new cryptocurrency mining business.
Launching bitcoin mining, GMO aims at contributing to development of cryptocurrencies. GMO’s professionals believe that cryptocurrencies will develop into “new universal currencies” available for use by anyone from any country or region to freely exchange “value,” creating a “new borderless economic zone.”
According to the Group’s announcement on December 20, it has launched a new cryptocurrency mining business in Northern Europe. GMO plans to begin upgrading its chips in the first half of next year.
This activity will be based on research into new mining chips being developed with still-to-be-revealed partners. The company will use cutting-edge 7 nm*1 process technology chips in the mining process. The new facility will be equipped with a compute capacity of 500 petahashes per second (PH/s). It will get electricity from geothermal and hydropower sources.
“The cryptocurrency mining business will use existing technology to mine from facilities (mining centers) in Northern Europe. GMO Internet will increase the size of the operation in phases, expanding the business,” GMO said.
The announcement also confirms GMO’s previous plans to develop a cloud mining service, through which it would sell excess hashing power and the corresponding rewards to consumers.
GMO also appears to be taking an eager approach to its mining business in the long-term. Moreover, GMO indicated that it would start selling mining hardware.
“After the company has gained a certain level of operational experience, it will work on initiatives including the provision of a cloud mining service and selling next-generation mining boards equipped with mining chips.”
Entering business of cryptocurrency mining will enable GMO Internet to support mining infrastructure of cryptocurrencies, which are the “new universal currencies,” by leveraging our accumulated know-how in Internet Infrastructure and Internet Finance.
Cryptocurrency mining is the energy-intensive process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain, creating new coins as a result.