Japan’s Internet Giant Could Control Six Percent Of Bitcoin Mining

[alyssa85]

https://cointelegraph.com/news/japans-internet-giant-could-control-six-percent-of-bitcoin-mining-plans-next-generation-center

Japanese Internet giant GMO has announced it will launch a Bitcoin mining business to corner around six percent of the market by 2018.

A disclosure which surfaced Thursday revealed plans to mine with 50,000 seven nm chips generating around 500 petahashes per second.

The initial cost to set up the project is “will be more than 10 percent of the consolidated noncurrent assets as of Dec. 31, 2016” of ¥3.489 bln ($32 mln).

“We will operate a next-generation mining center utilizing renewable energy and cutting-edge semiconductor chips in Northern Europe,” a translated copy of the disclosure reads.

“We will use cutting-edge seven nm process technology for chips to be used in the mining process, and jointly work on its research and development and manufacturing with our alliance partner having semiconductor design technology.”

GMO has operated since 1995 but only this year became involved in cryptocurrency, opening an exchange under Japan’s new licensing scheme.

As part of the plans, GMO will use coins it mines to add liquidity to its exchange arm, as well as run a cloud mining business and sell “next-generation mining boards.”

According to data from Blockchain.info, GMO could control around five to six percent of Bitcoin mining when it launches in the first half of 2018.

This is the first real big challenge to the Chinese miners.

[ViceOfBTC21]

Good news if only 6%. It's best to diversify network hashrate between organizations. P2Pool is perfect but only small pools are good too. Everyone is against large pools. One large pool with 20% and rest under 5% are still good.

[carrie_white]

I think 6% of all bitcoin mining in the world is a pretty big percentage, indeed we know japan is a very advanced country, almost from all new technological innovations sourced and found in japan, naturally if they have a more advanced mining technology and more than any other country

[HabBear]

Yeah, I like this! Competition is great! Everyone benefits from competition (except those that lose of course), but consumers win.

Another article on the topic from Quartz: https://qz.com/1071926/japans-gmo-internet-group-plans-a-300-million-investment-in-bitcoin-mining/

They've invested $3M to get this started. I'm excited to see where it goes. Anyone seen a tour of their facility?

[Netnox]

Competition is always better. I just hope that they behave in a competitive manner by not wasting the block size. I get mad when I see miners like Antpool regularly using only 200 KB or 300 KB in the blocks which they mine. They need to include the low-fee transactions as well, rather than excluding all the transactions below a certain threshold.

[Kemarit]

Yeah, I like this! Competition is great! Everyone benefits from competition (except those that lose of course), but consumers win.

Another article on the topic from Quartz: https://qz.com/1071926/japans-gmo-internet-group-plans-a-300-million-investment-in-bitcoin-mining/

They've invested $3M to get this started. I'm excited to see where it goes. Anyone seen a tour of their facility?

Haven't seen anything coming out from Japan. But this is a very good news indeed for the bitcoin community. And all with the news coming from Chinese government cracking down on bitcoin, its just a matter of time before they come at those bitcoin farms as well. So Japan investing into bitcoin mining is very timely indeed. Again, knowing the technology capacity, it will also certainly possible that they will also manufacture their own mining hardware as well. I also agree that 6% of the mining power is really huge and will also put a challenge from the Chinese. As we all know have been the exclusive control of the mining power globally. Japan is really a life save for the bitcoin community and market as well.

[Pursuer]

This is the first real big challenge to the Chinese miners.

first?
have you seen the hashrate distribution https://blockchain.info/pools
yes Chinese have big mining farms but most of the pools you see are pools where people from around the world can connect to. so it is not 100% Chinese despite it being a big percentage.
also there are mining farms in other countries. like the ~5% hashrate of BitFury coming from Georgia
Bitclub.Network ~5% from Iceland
Slush ~4% Czech Republic

[Emoclaw]

This is the first real big challenge to the Chinese miners.

first?
have you seen the hashrate distribution https://blockchain.info/pools
yes Chinese have big mining farms but most of the pools you see are pools where people from around the world can connect to. so it is not 100% Chinese despite it being a big percentage.

That doesn't really matter much, the majority of people who mine on pools don't switch to other pools when said pools support different consensus rules.
At least ove 40% of the hashrate is from Chinese pools. This isn't an issue in and of itself but the pool operators could more easily coordinate an immediate attack on Bitcoin.

[Netnox]

That doesn't really matter much, the majority of people who mine on pools don't switch to other pools when said pools support different consensus rules.
At least ove 40% of the hashrate is from Chinese pools. This isn't an issue in and of itself but the pool operators could more easily coordinate an immediate attack on Bitcoin.

But then, it needs to be seen whether this 40% is united or not. If there is no consensus between the various pools, how they are going to launch a coordinated attack? And my guess is that at least some of the pools are not in speaking terms with each other. But then, it will be a different game if the Chinese government orders the pools to do something.

[mobnepal]

I consider this as good news because this will lower down the total influence of chinese miners on bitcoin network, chinese fuds are getting worst lately and affecting bitcoin negatively. When bitcoin mining and trading will be diversified, chinese will loss their dominance over total crypto market.

[dothebeats]

Ahh Japan, the land of weird gameshows now stepping in to the world of cryptocurrency. 5% isn't a bad start, provided that they are doing it mainly to raise awareness to their people and to help the network as well. I'm not surprised that big companies would soon consider creating their own mining farms. The profit is always good if you are taking it in the long run.