A warehouse in Electric City will soon become the "Grant County Data Centre" for processing a type of currency that only exists digitally and has gained recent worldwide attention as its value increased 2,700 percent since September.
Atlas Cloud Enterprises Inc., a Canadian company, has apparently purchased the former Young's Welding building in Electric City for $300,000, and plans to invest another $2.6 million into it.
Atlas Cloud, shares of which are traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange, issued a news release last Wednesday on its website, stating it had purchased a facility in Electric City where it intends to "mine Bitcoin." It bought "MKH Electric City Holdings," a company the Grant County assessor's website listed as the owner of the former welding business property.
Atlas Cloud recently raised nearly $14 million (Canadian) issuing company stock shares and options, CSE filings state.
A major factor in choosing to put a facility in Electric City was Grant County PUD's low electricity rate of $0.03 per kilowatt hour, "one of the least expensive rates in the world," the company said.
The release from the company says they intend to use the 6,600-square-foot building to mine Bitcoin and provide blockchains for transactions using the cryptocurrency.
The estimated $2.6 million to be invested in the building is meant to convert the facility to host cryptocurrency-mining servers. The data center will initially use about 80 percent of the three megawatts of power available to it, powering up to 1,700 servers, the release said, but will use an additional 2 MW after a second-phase expansion in 2019, for which it is fully funded.
Investopedia.com defines Bitcoin mining as "the process by which transactions are verified and added to the public ledger, known as the blockchain, and also the means through which new bitcoin are released."
The Atlas Cloud website elaborated on what a blockchain is:
"Blockchains enable users to send money directly and safely from point to point, without going through a bank, a credit card company, or PayPal. Bitcoin or other digital currency isn't saved in a file somewhere; it's represented by transactions recorded in a blockchain - kind of like a global spreadsheet or ledger, which leverages the resources of a large peer-to-peer Bitcoin network to verify and approve each Bitcoin transaction. Rather than the internet of information, it's the internet of value or, the internet of money."
Bitcoin has made a lot of news in recent months as the value of the digital currency skyrocketed. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency which allows consumers to make transactions using, or invest their money into, a currency that isn't affiliated with a national government, such as the United States dollar. Payments made with Bitcoins can be made without banks or the need to give your name, meaning you can move your "money" around anonymously.
A single Bitcoin on Dec. 26 was worth $15,690. In September, a single Bitcoin was worth less than $5,000, and in 2016 a single Bitcoin was worth about $570.
Atlas Cloud Chief Financial Officer Yana Popova told The Star Tuesday that she would be able to say more about what's to come after the start of the new year.
In an October CSE filing, the company said its primary business is providing "co-location and back-up/redundancy IT and telecom equipment, and cloud computing to small and medium businesses in Western Canada."
The company recently raised about $14 million (Canadian) issuing company stock shares and options.
"We are thrilled to transition and launch into the operational phase of commercialization of our new Bitcoin mining facility," said Frank Stearman, the company president. "Our recent and successful financing efforts have launched what we believe will be one of the most cost-efficient and scalable operations in the business."
"Completion of the acquisition of MKH Electric City Holdings LLC is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, approval of the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "Exchange") as required," the release states.
Company shares traded between $1.14 and $1.25 Canadian last Friday, ending down from its previous closing price of $1.40.
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