It is feared by many that the utter dominance of Bitcoin mining by a handful of Chinese firms will doom the cryptocurrency. However, despite the fact that international competitors such as KnCMiner were driven to bankruptcy, a new venture dares to take on China with a facility in the US no less.
MGT Capital Investments, Inc. (NYSE MKT: MGT) has secured a location with a contracted low cost hydro power source (electric dam) in central Washington state to launch a facility generating over two PetaHash in processing power. This facility is expected to be fully operational by August 1, 2016, and has expansion capacity to nearly 10 PetaHash.
The company says that current pricing environment of bitcoin and other digital assets coupled with the release of new 16 nanometer ASIC chips provides a significant opportunity to generate excellent profit margins. Additionally, as the demand for transaction processing grows, it can redirect its mining machines towards supporting other tasks on the Blockchain .
Infamous cyber security pioneer and founder of the first commercial anti-virus program, John McAfee, is MGT's proposed Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. In addition to him, the entrepreneur Robert Collazo was chosen to lead this venture.
McAfee stated: "In order to meet the processing demand for our future cyber security products that are Blockchain based, MGT will need a large number of ASIC computers. Our announced strategy is particularly cost effective, as mining computers are perfectly suited for this task and can earn a great ROI until we utilize the processing power of these super-fast machines to support the future revenue streams of our products. Further, we pleased that Robert has agreed to join us and use his expertise to grow the project."
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If you want to know where the image at the top of this article comes from, it's from a satirical video of John McAfee explaining how to uninstall McAfee Antivirus. It features drug use, guns and scantily clad prostitutes so if you are offended by any of these be warned.
One can already imagine McAfee jetskiing across a giant dam with a machine gun in hand fending off Chinese spies, real or hallucinated ones, as an ad for this new venture.