Bitfury Newsroom

WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 22, 2015 – Today a public-private forum has been formed by the Bitcoin community to help combat criminal activity involving bitcoin and the blockchain. Founded by the Chamber of Digital Commerce and Coin Center, the Blockchain Alliance is comprised of a broad coalition of companies and other institutions that have come together to address public safety concerns about digital currencies and the blockchain.

Blockchain infrastructure provider and bitcoin mining company BitFury Group has weighed in on the ongoing block size limit debate with its latest research report. As it is, some members of the bitcoin network are saying that the current block size has been limiting the amount of transactions that can be handled.

Bitcoin mining company BitFury’s CEO Val Vavilov has been clear on the company’s stance in the Bitcoin block size debate. When we contacted him for his thoughts on the debate, Val sent a full statement detailing where BitFury stood on the issue and why. While going over this statement with BitFury, they gave us access to the news of their new 16nm chip announcement. The timing of this release follows its climb to the second largest hash rate provider in the world. Furthermore, BitFury is aggressively building out its 100 MW data center in Georgia.

Bitcoin mining giant BitFury is stamping its zero-carbon footprint intentions on the Bitcoin network with the design completion and tape-out of its 16nm transaction processing ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit).

Green Bitcoin mining is the future. At the Block Chain Summit on Necker Island in May of this year, BitFury disclosed its development of a potentially highly disruptive approach to wind-power generation.

CEO Val Vavilov told CoinDesk: "We think that the block size debate must be resolved by consensus and the voting mechanism introduced in BIP 100 is a good way to achieve such a consensus ... The power to make such future defining decisions must belong to the community."

When you are from an area stricken by conflict and you have no proof of existence, easily transfering money can be nearly impossible. However, that didn’t stop this woman from funding her female-focused educational project in Afghanistan. Instead of fiat currency and traditional remittance services, she used Bitcoin and became an example that inspired Nicolas Cary, co-founder of Blockchain.info.

Bitcoin companies have often been proactive when it comes to collect fund and help the victims of natural calamities whether it is earthquake in Nepal or Ebola in Africa. This time it is flood victims in Tbilisi who are going to be helped by BitFury Group and Georgian Co-Investment Fund. The two organizations have raised over $64,000 in Bitcoins during the global fundraising campaign.

The funds raised as a result of the global bitcoin fundraising campaign have been donated to the Tbilisi City Hall, Tbilisi Zoo, and Tamaz Elizbarashvili’s Dog Shelter.

DRW Venture Capital, iTech Capital and the Georgian Co-Investment Fund participated in the round. The company has raised $60 million to date over three rounds.
CEO Val Vavilov co-founded the San Francisco-based company in 2011 to become a leading bitcoin blockchain infrastructure provider and transaction processing company. The startup just rolled out its “high-performance” 28-nm chip and recently acquired immersion cooling tech startup Allied Control. BitFury also announced plans to further expand operations in the Republic of Georgia with a new data center it’s calling the “Techno Park.”

BitFury, the bitcoin-mining operation based in Amsterdam, has announced a new round of fund raising, and plans to build another data center in the country of Georgia, as the firm looks to stay ahead of its peers in a highly competitive and fast-changing mining industry.