GMO Mining Halted | GMO Internet Group Loses Mining Revenue

Japan’s GMO Internet Group has published a report on its in-house crypto mining operations. The IT giant confirmed that it took a steep hit in its overall GMO mining revenue. However, it steadily increased its monthly BTC mining rewards.

GMO Mining Revenue

The company showed “extraordinary loss” from its hardware manufacturing sector in Q4 of 2018. As a result, GMO said it will “no longer develop, manufacture and sell” miners.

The company only entered the mining hardware sector in 2017, so that was very short-lived.

However, while it will close its hardware manufacturing business, GMO will continue its in-house mining operations.

These operations will be restructured, and the company is to relocate its mining center to a less costly region for electricity.

Increase

So while overall revenue from mining hardware has tanked, the company’s Bitcoin mining reward has consistently increased over time. Receiving just 21 BTC in December 2017, this grew to 528 BTC by June 2018, and even further to 960 BTC in December 2018.

The company explains this: “the market’s total hash rate decreased, so our mining share rose and our mining reward expanded.”

Bitcoin Cash

The released document also gives full data on mining rewards and hash rate for the other cryptocurrency it mines, including Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The altcoin has delivered fluctuating rewards for the company. From 213 BCH in December 2017 to 62 BCH in June 2018, rising to 875 BCH in October before falling to 400 BCH in November 2018.

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Moving forward, GMO has stated it will no longer report monthly on its crypto mining operations. It will disclose the results as part of its quarterly earnings announcements instead.

The company made an innovative move at the end of 2018 whereby it offered to pay its employees in Bitcoin. Being paid in Bitcoin meant an increase of 10% on an employee’s regular fiat wage if they opted for Bitcoin.

I don’t know if I would take that risk, would you?