Long Blockchain Corp., the Farmingdale company formerly named Long Island Iced Tea Corp., today announced it has penned a definitive agreement to acquire ‎1,000 Antminer S9 mining rigs and 1,000 APW3++ PSUs‎. The first batch of S9 Antminers is scheduled to be shipped and delivered in January 2018 and to start up mining operations in the same month.

Learn how to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum safely with our simple guide!
The S9 Antminers are manufactured by Bitmain, one the world’s most recognized Bitcoin/ cryptocurrency companies.  The mining rig is listed on Bitmain‎’s site at nearly $2000, and is currently viewed as one of the best mining options available based upon price per hash (13.5 TeraHash per second) and electrical efficiency (0.098 watts per Gigahash).

The mining rigs are planned to operate at a co-location facility located in a Nordic country, where the all-in cost of operating the miners, inclusive of electricity, rent, cooling, general rig maintenance and management, will be competitive as the mining farm uses geothermal and hydro-electric power sources.

Bitcoin prices rose on a Wall Street Journal report (paywall) that Peter Thiel’s investment fund recently made a major wager on the cryptoasset, adding to the list of bigwigs whose support for the market has inflamed the mania. But the PayPal co-founder is no [Suspicious link removed]iviste—he’s had a vision for a stateless digital currency for nearly two decades.

Founders Fund, the venture-capital firm co-founded by Thiel, bought $15 to $20 million worth of bitcoin last year, the Journal said yesterday, citing unidentified sources. Those holdings are now reportedly worth hundreds of millions, as bitcoin’s price climbed 14-fold in 2017. Bitcoin rose as much as 13% to $15,392 on the CoinDesk price index in the 24 hours since news of the Founders Fund holdings broke.

When Thiel started PayPal, he never saw it as simply a payment mechanism for eBay sales, or a way for millennials to split bar tabs. In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session in 2014, Thiel talked about his failure to deliver on his original ambition to turn PayPal into a “new world currency.” (The company’s website now says it’s “committed to democratizing financial services.”)

Bitcoin bull: Bitcoin could easily top $50K in 2018   Bitcoin bull: Bitcoin could easily top $50K in 2018 
11 Hours Ago | 06:15
One of bitcoin's biggest bulls sees a $50,000 future for bitcoin in 2018.

Spencer Bogart, a partner at Blockchain Capital, thinks the controversial cryptocurrency will continue to perform, as long as both retail and institutional investors get involved and stay there.

On the institutional side, there is only room to move up, according to Bogart. And surveys show growing interest in bitcoin ownership from retail investors, especially young ones.

"Institutional ownership is still effectively zero percent. There's a lot of room for upward movement here," Bogart said on CNBC's "Fast Money." "The drawbridges for institutional pools of capital have just been lowered."

Bogart admits bitcoin is still new, calling it a "bit of an exotic product for institutional investors," but he is confident the popularity will eventually trickle down to these investors, even if they sit out a couple of rounds to focus on derivatives.

"If institutional players want to play in this market, they'll dip their toe in the water or wait on the sidelines to see if the products themselves function," Bogart said. "This is a first round of product set that's going to evolve and mature and eventually become a deep market."

But much of Bogart's confidence comes from bitcoin's popularity among young adults. He referenced a Harris Poll for Blockchain Capital that found 19 percent of Americans and 32 percent of millennial Americans said they would invest in bitcoin in 5 years.

"When I think about what are likely good indicators of future technology trends, I pick younger demographics over older demographics every time," he said.

In the blockchain versus bitcoin debate, Bogart said it will still be important to focus on bitcoin in the coming year. But the verdict is out on the long-term value, so he'll keep investing in both, he said.

"There's certainly a thesis that suggests that a lot of the value accrues to the underlying protocols like bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin," he said. "But I think that there is a lot of value accruing to the businesses built on top of these networks. The Ripples of the world, the Coinbases of the world, are worth a significant amount of capital right now."

Gonna wait for more information to see if this project is worth keeping an eye on.