Blockchain Technology Solutions(BTCS) has announced the purchase of a new, 83,000 square foot mining facility with the intention to fill it with 550 TH/s worth of hashing power, purchased by hardware manufacturer Spondoolies.
They expect the mining equipment to go online in the next two to four weeks and they expect it to represent a 161 % increase in their total hashing power; pushing their total capacity up to 891 TH/s.
The deal came with significant investment from Spondoolies, in order to lower the cost of the mining hardware. BTCS is giving Spondoolies 250,000 shares of the company. Those shares are coming from Charles Kiser, the Senior Vice President of BTCS, so the public shareholders should be unaffected by this deal.
BTCS predicts that “without further expansion” they should mine at least 350 BTC in the first quarter of 2015. At current prices, that comes out to roughly USD $80,050. But BTCS appears to be bullish on Bitcoin and could be banking on a price rise at some point this year. BTCS CEO Charles Allen explained the strategy.
[blockquote]We’re seizing market opportunities created by the recent downturn in bitcoin price and expanding accordingly. At the current price of bitcoin, cost structure matters, and we believe we’ll have one of the lowest cost mining operations in the industry.[/blockquote]
BTCS is also rolling out two of three multi-signature security based on Gem.co’s security services. BTCS is a strategic investor in Gem.co so it should come as no surprise that they chose them to help secure user funds. Unfortunately, multi-signature protection is in beta and currently only available to invited customers. No word yet on when it will be rolling out to general users, but one has to assume that BTCS would roll it out as soon as they are confident that it has been implemented correctly.
According to their investor material, BTCS envisions a future where single service bitcoins companies may hit a ceiling. To combat that, they are attempting to build and fund an entire Bitcoin ecosystem.
Their flagship feature is a shop that allows you to purchase from various retailers through them, using Bitcoin, without that retailer needing to accept bitcoin themselves. It also searches the web for the best price, essentially it’s a bit like Kayak.com for bitcoin commerce.
They also offer the aforementioned wallet (soon to be multisig) and are early investors in payment processor GoCoin, digital currency exchange Expresscoin, Bitcoin ATM manufacturer Coin Outlet and as mentioned previously, Gem.co’s security services. Obviously, mining is also a big part of their plans.
We will have more as it develops.