Back in September 2017, we reported on giant Japanese conglomerate GMO Internet announcing its intention to expand into the world of cryptocurrency mining. In December of that year it launched the new venture (in "Northern Europe", according to the official announcement), and the firm has now released its first set of results.
The numbers
The report, dated February 2018, displays the Hash Rate and mining reward that GMO Internet achieved for both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash in the first two months of 2018. It shows that in February the company mined 124 BTC and 287 BCH, an improvement from January's figures of 93 BTC and 25 BCH.
In other words, GMO's Bitcoin mining improved by over 30% in one month, and its Bitcoin Cash mining improved by a factor of ten.
All told, GMO Internet made 1,796,166 USD from cryptocurrency mining in February 2018 (at current rates according to Coinmarketcap).
In the same period, the hash rate as reported rose from 27 to 108 PH/s, a fourfold increase. The company states that it aims to reach 3,000 PH/s by the end of this year.
Market comparison
For comparison, I will take BitFury, a San Francisco-based mining operation that made 93.7 million USD operating profit in fiscal year 2017 according to Coindesk.
BitFury accounted for 1.22 percent of the world's mining power with a hashrate of 294.82 PH/s in the last 24 hours, according to Blockchain .info. In other words, GMO Internet has reached roughly a third of BitFury's hashrate within only two months.
GMO Internet's stated goal of 3000 PH/s would put it on an approximate level with AntPool, which is owned by Chinese mining goliath Bitmain. AntPool currently accounts for about 15% of the world's hash power. Bitmain controls over half of the world's mining pie with its numerous and variously-named operations, and it was estimated to have made between 3 and 4 billion USD in operating profit in fiscal 2017.
Conclusion
We can conclude from this that 1, the mining market is hard to break into because of the monopoly of the pre-existing giants, and 2, there is real money in it if you have the capital to begin a serious operation.
GMO Internet is no small-fry, and it's been big on cryptocurrency since before it was cool.
