Bitmain is building a massive $500M cryptocurrency mining farm in Texas

Bitmain, monster of cryptocurrency mining, has shown off plans for its brand new blockchain data center to be built in Texas – it’s worth $500 million and it’s already under construction.

The announcement claims that initial operations should begin by early 2019. Bitmain expects it to be at full steam in “about” two years, at which stage 400 jobs would have been injected into the economy of Rockdale, Milam County.

“This represents an investment of more than $500 million by Bitmain over an initial period of seven years into the local, county, and statewide economies,” the release reads. “The Milam County blockchain data center and cryptocurrency mining facility represents a key component of Bitmain’s strategic investment and expansion plans within North America.”

Bitmain has solidified itself as an industry leader in blockchain hardware and software. It’s mostly known for its specialized cryptocurrency mining hardware, widely used by large mining groups, called pools.

Bitmain’s mining pools , namely Antpool and BTCom, are two of the most profitable groups currently mining Bitcoin. Back in June, the two controlled almost 51 percent of hash rate – the overall processing power being used to confirm transactions.

In fact, its so efficient at crypto-mining that cryptocurrencies are hard forking to escape its control, after Bitcoin Gold declared war on its ASIC chips a few months back.

Luckily, it seems Milam County is a bit more receptive – as long as Bitmain maintain its end of the bargain, that is.

And why shouldn’t they? Profits of over $1 billion were posted by Bitmain in just the first quarter of this year. It could also be inching closer to being publicly listed via IPO – its valuation rumored to be as high as $12 billion a few months back.

More recently, though, it has reportedly found investment from tech giants Tencent and Softbank – boosting the number significantly to $15 billion, although those reports have yet to be confirmed.

Telegram denies SEC allegations that its token is a security in new court filing

Messaging app Telegram wants a US court to dismiss the allegations put forward by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about its token being a security.

Telegram outlined its case in a court filing submitted on Tuesday, where it refuted all the allegations made by the SEC.

“Plaintiff’s claims are without merit as Telegram‘s private placement to highly sophisticated, accredited investors was conducted pursuant to valid exemptions to registration under the federal securities laws and Grams will not be securities when they are created at the time of launch on the TON Blockchain,” the filing reads.

“[…] Plaintiff has engaged in improper ‘regulation by enforcement’ in this nascent area of the law, failed to provide clear guidance and fair notice of its views as to what conduct constitutes a violation of the federal securities laws, and has now adopted an ad hoc legal position that is contrary to judicial precedent and the publicly expressed views of its own high-ranking officials,” it adds.

Telegram noted it had “voluntarily engaged” with the SEC, allegedly asking for guidance on how to avoid breaking federal securities laws, but claimed the regulator failed to help before it decided to enact enforcement action.

Additionally, Telegram said its Gram tokens are yet to be created and noted that “if and when they do, they will constitute a currency and/or commodity — not securities under the federal securities laws.”

Telegram agreed to stop selling its Gram tokens in October this year. At the time, a court filing said it had made the decision to do so “to maintain the status quo” until the court could “resolve the legal issues at the heart of the matter.”

Originally, Telegram told investors that it was planning to deliver the “first batches” of Gram by October 31. But, the SEC secured an emergency restraining order against Telegram in mid-October, halting its token sale.

The SEC has certainly been kept busy in recent months. In September, it charged adult content marketplace Fantasy Market with running a fraudulent ICO and sued a cryptocurrency startup for selling $14.6M worth of unregistered tokens.

The process to date certainly hasn’t been straightforward, but who can blame the regulator given the current rhetoric linking cryptocurrency and crime.

Samsung launches blockchain-based finance platform

Samsung SDS, a subsidiary of Samsung Group that provides information technology services, is launching a new digital finance platform that will be powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology.

The platform, named Nexfinance, will offer services such as digital identity management, finance concierge, and automatic insurance payment. While the latter two services will utilize AI, Samsung SDS claims that it will utilize blockchain technology to ensure secure transmission of personal information for the digital identity service.

The finance platform will be openly-sourced, so clients will be able to apply third-party solutions. A Samsung SDS official stated at a press event in Seoul today:

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Samsung SDS has incorporated blockchain technology in its services. It has previously developed a blockchain for Samsung’s credit card subsidairy and also worked on a blockchain project for the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

The company launched its business-to-business (b2b) blockchain platform, Nexledger , last year, which also provided digital identity verification as one of the services.

The competition has however increased since then. Technology giant Microsoft announced a plan-in-motion to utilize blockchain for securing digital identity in February this year. The United Nation’s (UN) ID2020 initiative , which also has Microsoft, IBM, and Accenture as its partners, is also utilizing blockchain technology to solve privacy and security issues associated with identity management, along with a host of blockchain startups working on digital identity.

With such rise in competition, it will be interesting to see what Samsung SDS comes up with as part of their new service.

It is not just the subsidiary that is interested in blockchain technology though. Reports surfaced earlier this year that Samsung is also manufacturing cryptocurrency mining equipment .