Australian investment firm Macro Energy Limited, which recently acquired digitalBTC, has announced a strategic agreement with CloudHashing.com – a company that lets customers pay to use its servers to mine bitcoin, rather than invest in their own rigs.
Macro is planning to raise AU$9.1m as part of the digitalBTC deal and last week it said it will invest the money in mining operations and the expansion of other digitalBTC operations.
It now appears that a sizable chunk of the investment will go toward the newly announced strategic deal with CloudHashing.com.
‘Win-win’ situation
Under the agreement, CloudHashing.com’s software will be deployed on digitalBTC’s bitcoin hardware, located in data centres in Iceland and Texas. The hardware will be managed by CloudHashing.com, and the companies will have an opportunity engage in reciprocal arrangements for the supply of mining hardware.
This synergic relationship extends to trading too, as digitalBTC – a bitcoin investment and management company – will handle bitcoin trading activities for CloudHashing.com through its trade desk. Since CloudHashing.com is the largest bitcoin cloud mining provider on the planet, this sounds like a coup for digitalBTC.
“The provision of digitalBTC trading services to CloudHashing.com will create a win-win outcome for both digitalBTC and CloudHashing.com,” said digitalBTC’s Executive Chairman Zhenya Tsvetnenko.
Expansion opportunities
Tsvetnenko said digitalBTC is poised and ready to expand in all facets of bitcoin operations, but it will start off by focusing on bitcoin mining:
“This agreement with CloudHashing.com will lead to the deployment of their best-in-class proprietary bitcoin mining management system to our state of the art hardware, allowing us to concentrate our software development resources on our integrated suite of retail-focused mobile applications for bitcoin and other digital currencies.”
Tsvetnenko and Macro Energy are clearly taking their bitcoin push seriously. They plan to raise a significant amount of money, but, more importantly, digitalBTC will be the first bitcoin company to be listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, allowing public market investors to get on board.
The market liked that idea and Macro Energy shares gained 42% following the announcement of the digitalBTC acquisition.
CloudHashing’s love affair with Iceland
For its part, CloudHashing says it is proud to be the mining partner of choice to digitalBTC.
“This is a mutually beneficial relationship and partnership for both parties. CloudHashing bringing its wealth of knowledge in the bitcoin mining space and digitalBTC is entering an exciting market with strong capital backing and proven bitcoin trading success,” CloudHashing.com CEO Emmanuel Abiodun told CoinDesk.
Abiodun points out that interest in similar co-op deals is on the rise. He notes that CloudHashing.com has grown at “an alarming rate” and he expects even more success from deals with companies such as digitalBTC.
“It is a trend I believe we will continue to see and companies like DigitalBTC are at the forefront,” he added.
When asked to comment on CloudHashing.com’s expansion into Iceland, Abiodun said mining in the country is growing at a rapid pace.
“We have more than trebled our capacity in Iceland alone. Our overall pool size has grown over ten times since January 2014. Iceland is a great place to mine bitcoin and we have not had issues with regulators,” he concluded.
At full capacity, CloudHashing.com expects it will be churning out between $7.5m and $10m dollars in coins a month. The sheer scale of the operation creates unique opportunities for digitalBTC and its trade desk.
Cloud computing image via Shutterstock