$50 Million Bitcoin Mining Farm Opens in Armenia

A new cryptocurrency mining facility opened in Armenia on Oct. 18. The $50 million farm will extract bitcoin and ethereum using 3,000 machines, according to local media reports. Around 120,000 more miners are to be added in the months to come.

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Multi Group and Omnia Establish Landmark Armenian Mining Facility

The mining project, spearheaded by Armenian real estate investment company Multi Group Concern and Malta-registered Omnia Tech International Company, was officially launched in the Armenian capital of Yerevan on Thursday. The country’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, businessmen and entrepreneurs from China, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates attended the ceremony, Arka News Agency reported.

Gagik Tsarukyan, an Armenian businessman and politician who is also founder and head of Multi Group, said the company spent $50 million creating the facility, including the installation of industrial level cooling systems. The farm’s first floor is designed for an information technology business center that runs around the clock, he explained.

According to an earlier statement by Multi Group chief executive Sedrak Arustamyan, the farm will be operated by Omnia Tech, a mining entity that offers lifetime contracts and daily payouts. Omnia Tech has said to be in partnership with Genesis Mining, a leading cryptocurrency hashpower supplier.

“We will also help Omnia Tech with the establishment of the Financial Technology Park and the data exchange center in Armenia,” Arustamyan said in April. Robert Velghe, Omnia Tech founder, indicated at the time that the two companies were planning to invest more than $2 billion in mining projects in Armenia. “We intend to create here a blockchain-based center for the development of new information projects, which will turn Armenia into a high-tech platform,” he said.

Global Cryptocurrency Mining Operations Rise

Armenia is aiming to create its own Silicon Valley by establishing a free economic zone that will host a state-of-the-art technology center, officials have said. The new mining facility, the country’s first, comes at a time when a number of countries are implementing and expanding blockchain technologies. Georgia, Armenia’s neighbor, set up its first bitcoin mining farm two years ago.

In August, Russian company Kriptoyunivers announced it had transformed a former fertilizer laboratory into a cryptocurrency mining operation. The center, which supports the mining of bitcoin and litecoin, was built over 4,000 square meters of land in the town of Kirshi near St. Petersburg, with an investment of 500 million rubles ($7.4 million). Although Moscow has cracked the whip on illegal attempts at cryptocurrency mining, Russia is still the third largest cryptocurrency producer in the world after China and the United States.

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