By Marco Streng
Over the past few months we’ve announced one of the largest hardware deals in the history of bitcoin mining and raised over $550 million in outside funding from investors including Paradigm, NYDIG, Stoneridge, FTX, Alameda Research, Ribbit, Electric Capital, Skybridge, and Kingsway Capital.
This mining hardware and capital is being used to fund our aggressive expansion plans in the US and Nordics where clean energy is readily available, as we work towards our goal to bring 1.4 gw online by 2023.
We’re incredibly proud of our teams efforts to make this happen and honored to have such elite investors on board who align with our vision and mission.
With all this news now announced, I wanted to take a few minutes to share a bit about why we are so passionate about what we do.
The Economic Exclusion of Billions Around the Globe
Imagine this scenario: you’re a 15 year old in a remote village in Sudan. You come from a family that’s been farming for generations. They expect you to be a farmer as well but you have desires for something new – something different.
Your access to the internet has given a glimpse into a different world. You’ve spent the past few years reading blogs and watching YouTube videos learning how to program. After a lot of hard work, you’ve become a very talented programmer and now you wonder, “How can I use these skills to make a living for myself?”
Everyone you know is a farmer so there’s no local market for your services but you read there’s a big market for programmers in the US. You read online about a platform called Upwork – a marketplace that connects workers like you to companies in need of services. “THIS IS AMAZING!” you say to yourself as you rush to open your account and get started. But when you go to visit their website, the page won’t load!
As you troubleshoot, you come across a forum where others from Sudan face the same problem. Then you see it. The top answer says: “Moving to a different country is the only current solution”. The page won’t load because Upwork doesn’t allow people from Sudan to use the service.
Despite your skills as a programmer and burning desire to create a better life for yourself, your entire nation is banned from Upwork and all the other platforms that are similar. Their banking partners don’t support Sudan and there’s nothing you can do to change that other than sign the petition that begs for access.
These are the types of scenarios that billions of people around the globe face every single day. Some are entirely excluded because of their country while others are excluded because they don’t have the documents required to open a bank account. Others are able to open bank accounts but are limited to options that charge predatory fees. And many more are excluded from being able to choose the currency they store their wealth in and are left stuck with unstable currencies subject to economic-political measures that they can’t change.
At the end of the day, they all share one thing in common: because of where they are born, they find themselves excluded from participating in the global digital economy in the way they choose.
For all of history, that’s just been the way things are. But for the first time in history, a new technology has presented a better solution than having to move to a totally new country in order to fulfill your desires to create a better life for yourself. That technology is, of course, Bitcoin — the best form of money the world has ever seen.
Bitcoin: A Better Form of Money That Will Bring Billions of People Into the Global Digital Economy
The underbanked and unbanked populations face two key problems. First, they have limited options available when it comes to secure and fair banking services. This is the problem many in the Bitcoin industry call out but the more important problem is the reason they don’t have accounts in the first place: they don’t have enough money to keep in an account.
Bitcoin has the potential to solve both of these problems by providing access to secure low cost borderless banking solutions along with providing the ability to participate in the global digital economy and ride the wave of new jobs that will be created in the years ahead.
Whether you are a farmer in Sudan or a college student in China, Bitcoin doesn’t care who you are or where you live. All you need is an internet connection and you instantly have the ability to easily send and receive funds for practically free with anyone anywhere in the world along with the freedom to choose how your wealth from those transactions is stored.
We imagine a world where money knows no borders or rules. All citizens have equal access to the same financial services and the ability to freely participate in the global digital economy. This is the future that we want to see for our children and future generations.
Providing the Infrastructure for the Future of Money
For our team at Genesis Digital Assets, we are driven by our mission to power this new form of money that eliminates economic exclusion, creates a more fair world to live in, and gives people the freedom to create the life they want.
Bitcoin can make all this possible. But for Bitcoin to succeed at a truly global scale, it requires a massive decentralized infrastructure that can verify transactions and power the network. This is what Bitcoin mining is all about.
As the most experienced industrial-scale Bitcoin mining operator in the world, we are committed to providing this infrastructure and powering the Bitcoin revolution. Our latest procurement partnerships and fundings are key steps towards our mission to provide the infrastructure to power the future of money.
