U.S. bitcoin mining company Blockcap has established a headquarters in Austin, Texas, and anticipates bringing 32,000 new mining machines online over the next year, the firm revealed exclusively to CoinDesk.
Blockcap, which just completed a $38 million raise, says it currently mines roughly 6 BTC a day using 10,000 machines. With its expansion, Blockcap plans to grow its hashrate – a measure of the company’s mining power – to 3.5 exahashes per second.
“We’re happy to be in Texas. It’s a friendly, pro-business environment, with a highly skilled workforce, especially in the tech industry. We were looking for a place with high saturation of professionals in the blockchain space and the financial products space, and it really helps to see other amazing companies moving into the region as well,” Blockcap founder and Chairman Darin Feinstein told CoinDesk.
He mentioned as one example Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer whose founder, Elon Musk, is a newly minted bitcoin bull. Tesla now accepts bitcoin for payment (and whose developers have actually helped work on open-source bitcoin wallet software).
The news comes at a time when mining operations in Texas are expanding at a rapid clip. Colorado-based miner Riot Blockchain recently purchased a mining facility from German mining company Northern Data. London miner Aargo recently set up shop in Texas. Companies including Upstream Data and Great American Mining outfit oil and gas producers with the tools to turn otherwise flared or vented gas into hashrate.
Rick Perry, the former state governor as well as U.S. Energy secretary, enthused in Blockcap’s press release the move is “yet more evidence that we have become the premier location for forward-looking industries like blockchain.”