Bitmain Is Moving To Europe But MoonLite Got There First

Ask anyone familiar with the bitcoin space to name a bitcoin mining company and chances are they’ll say Bitmain. Bitmain is a privately-owned multi-national semiconductor company headquartered in Beijing, China, which is known for two things – one, for its range of industry gold standard bitcoin and other cryptocurrency mining equipment, Antminer, and two, for its operating one of the worlds largest bitcoin mining farms in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region that’s part of China.

Over the last six months, however, regulatory actions from the Chinese government have forced Bitmain to reconsider its operational approach. Sure, Mongolia is autonomous from central China, but this far from insulates Bitmain from the whims of the Chinese government and, as such, there have long existed rumors that Bitmain will diversify its geographical approach and set up shop somewhere that isn’t as susceptible to government action.

And this week, we got confirmation of these rumors.

The company just announced a brand new arm of its mining operations, a subsidiary, called Bitmain Switzerland that, as its name suggests, is located in Switzerland. Europe has proven incredibly accommodative of cryptocurrency companies both from a regulatory and a local talent pool perspective and when these factors are coupled with the geography, climate and tax aspects of a North Central European location, it looks as though Bitmain has made a smart decision.

There’s another company, however, that’s beaten Bitmain to the punch – MoonLite.

And in the case of MoonLite, investors are able to pick up an exposure to the company’s growth right now.

MoonLite is a bitcoin mining company that is currently conducting an initial coin offering (ICO) designed to raise the capital it needs to build and operate a large-scale bitcoin and other cryptocurrency mining facility in Iceland. Just as is the case in Switzerland, Iceland is very well placed as a home for a bitcoin mining facility for a variety of reasons – tax law, climate (it’s cool enough to not require expensive cooling equipment), talent pool (Iceland has a 100% literacy rate) and, perhaps most important, unrestrictive government regulatory activity.

MoonLite aims to have the first phase of its mining operations live by August 2018, at which point the company will have 28,000 Ths hash power dedicated to bitcoin mining and 504,000 Mhs to Litecoin mining.

In a subsequent phase 2, this will rise to 56,000Ths for bitcoin, 504,000 Mhs for Litecoin and will include Dash mining at 15,000Ghs.

By a third phase of the company’s operational rollout, the Icelandic facility will be mining bitcoin at 120,000 Ths, Litecoin at 1,008,000 Mhs and Dash at 30,000 Ghs.

In other words, this is going to be a very large operation and it’s going to position MoonLite as one of the leading bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrency mining companies in the world.

So how can an investor that wants to pick up an exposure to this facility (and subsequent growth) do so?

As mentioned above, the company is currently in the early stages of an ICO, with a pre-sale currently underway. As part of the pre-sale, MoonLite is offering bonus tokens to any participants, with the bonus available between 100-300%, depending on the scale of participation of the individual in question.

Once the presale completes (and it’s live for another two and a half weeks), the sale will move into a second phase whereby investors will receive a 50% sign up bonus and – subsequent to the second phase – a third phase will open whereby no bonus is available.

In the current phase, 1000 of the company’s tokens (called MNL) are available for 1ETH and investors looking to participate can do so using a range of different methods, including Visa and MasterCard (for those not wanting to first purchase crypto) and the spectrum of top-tier coins – Litecoin, bitcoin, Dash, Ripple and more.

Check out the Moonlite whitepaper here for more information.

Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.

Image courtesy of Christian Barrette via Flickr