Hong Kong Alcohol Company Buys 51% of Bitcoin Miner for $60 Million

Regardless of what the central Chinese government tries to do or say, bitcoin and cryptocurrency remain popular investments among everyday people in China. And a new way to get exposure to the ecosystem just materialized for those with access to the Hong Kong market, a publicly traded company entered the mining industry.

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Wine and Mine

Diginex Limited, a multinational crypto-asset investment company headquartered in Hong Kong has announced it sold a 51% stake of its cryptocurrency mining and high performance computing (HPC) operation for $60 million USD to Madison Group Holdings (HKG: 8057), a distributor of alcoholic beverages. An MOU (memorandum of understanding) between the two companies detailed a number of synergies, including the leveraging of Diginex’s proprietary platform Digiassets that can be used by holders of cryptocurrencies to purchase high value wines and other assets.

Madison Holdings Group, formerly Madison Wine, is an investment holding company mainly focused on the retail and wholesale alcoholic beverages business. The company offers a wide spectrum of fine wines, wine related products and other spirits such as premium and rare whiskies, cognacs and Chinese baijiu in Hong Kong. Madison is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2015.

GPU Farms in Asia, Sweden and Switzerland

Diginex, which privately owned, has offices in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Germany and Japan. It has mining operations in Asia, Switzerland and Sweden. The $60 million investment by Madison is said to allow Diginex to fast track the expansion of their GPU mining operations in Western Europe in partnership with hardware suppliers, power and security providers in order to build a secure and efficient GPU-based cryptocurrency mining data center.

Miles Pelham, the CEO of Diginex, stated: “this cash injection allows us to expedite our steps towards becoming the global provider of Distributed Ledger Technologies. We will continue to build out our mining operations in Sweden and Switzerland, but also focus on helping corporates and governments across the world to implement transformative DLT applications.”

Are there any synergies between wine cellars and crypto mining farms that these companies can now exploit? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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