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En+ Group, a Moscow-headquartered aluminum and hydropower giant, has moved into the cryptocurrency mining space.

The firm, listed in the London Stock Exchange with close to 20 gigawatt-hour of power capacity globally, has formed a joint venture called Bit+ with BitRiver, the largest known bitcoin miner hosting provider in Russia. 

The two companies said on Thursday Bit+’s first phase of bitcoin mining facility is already up and running with 10 megawatt-hour of capacity provided by En+. The firms added that Bit+ does not engage self-mining and only offers hosting services for customers, which are not exclusive to bitcoin mining.

“We actively support the development of data centers in the Irkutsk Region. Our energy assets in the region produce low-carbon, inexpensive electricity from renewable sources, and we are
able to offer surplus energy to these partnerships,” said Mikhail Khardikov, head of En+ Group’s energy business.

Under the joint venture, BitRiver runs and manages the operations of the facility, which is near to its sites in Russia’s Bratsk, a city known for the vast Bratsk reservoir.

For context, a 10 megawatt-hour hydropower plant can boost as much as 250 petahashes per second (PH/s) of computing power if it’s fully used to support the most advanced bitcoin miners such as Bitmain’s AntMiner S19 Pro. 

At bitcoin’s current mining difficulty, 250 PH/s of computing power can produce roughly 2.2 bitcoin in 24 hours. The two partners plan to complete the first phase by December that will have a total of 14 what they call modulars up and running. Each modular is a converted shipping container that can house up to 400 AntMiner S19 Pro.

At full capacity, 5,600 units of AntMiner S19 Pro could consume about 25 megawatt-hour of electricity with a computing power of over 600 PH/s. Eventually, the two companies aim to scale up Bit+’s mining facility to 40 megawatt-hour. 

“We are delighted to provide our extensive expertise in sustainable cryptocurrency mining. Together we decided to use a modular design for testing this new business model, based on its efficiency in terms of organizing and managing the business,” said Igor Runets, founder and CEO of BitRiver.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of crypto derivative exchange FTX, has made $5.2 million in donation to the U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden. 

According to Opensecret.org data, FTX.US is cited as one of the top donors in the 2020 cycle that contributed $5,220,000 to Biden’s presidential election campaign against Donald Trump.

Data from the Associated Press shows Biden is leading the race with 264 electoral votes as of press time – six electoral college votes away from winning the 2020 presidential election.

Opensecret.org specifies that the donation “came from the organizations’ PACs; their individual members, employees or owners; and those individuals’ immediate families.”

As such, the organizations themselves did not donate, as they are prohibited by law from doing so at the federal level.

Bankman-Fried confirmed to The Block that he did make the donation via a vehicle but it was through Alameda, the investment arm that is also run by himself.

Bankman-Fried’s political contribution was initially reported by several mainstream media including the Wall Street Journal and Vox but has largely gone unnoticed in the crypto space. 

Other notable names on Biden’s top contributor list that have made the same donation range include U.S. hedge fund Renaissance Technologies (RenTec) and Simon Property Group, the largest shopping mall operator in the U.S.

It was previously reported that the $75 billion hedge fund RenTec has been eyeing the bitcoin futures market, according to its regulatory filing.

Frank Chaparro contributed to reporting

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Bitcoin’s value proposition in the eyes of investors has changed since its inception. 

Over the past decade, investors have touted bitcoin as a superior method of payment as well as a kind of digital gold. Some proponents have highlighted its nature as an uncorrelated asset as one feature that could make it a unique addition to a portfolio. 

As noted recently by research by Ark Invest, bitcoin’s deviation from the “behavior of other asset classes” could help it “serve as a strategic allocation in a well-diversified portfolio.” Still, for much of the Covid-19 crisis, bitcoin has remained fairly correlated to the broader stock market, as noted by research from The Block. 

Indeed, the 30-day rolling correlation between bitcoin and the S&P 500 has stood above 0.5 for the majority of the year. 

But according to macro investor Raoul Pal, co-founder of Real Vision, that makes sense given bitcoin’s currency attributes. 

“It has the attributes of a currency and a bit of a commodity,” he told The Block. “Currencies are what’s known as Bayesian in distribution—which means that they have shifting variables that affect them.” 

He went on to say:

“Which is why currencies — which are very simple things — are so impossible to forecast. Because everyone goes look—it’s the interest rate differential, and then it’s not, and then it is the corporate M&A flow, and then it’s not, and then it is the inflation rate in a country, then it is not. There’s always a different reason. It shifts. Bitcoin has that. It has shifting correlation and that’s okay. When you look over an extended period of time, the correction is not so much.”

Considering the rate at which central banks have been expanding their balance sheet, bitcoin has outperformed—despite recent correlation. Here’s Pal:

“Well, you take the G-4 central bank balance sheets, the equity market is basically underperformed over an extended period, then recently kind of held its own against it. Gold underperformed by 50%. Bitcoin [is] the only asset that killed it. Completely outperformed. Over-time even with the correlation between equities and bitcoin, the risk-reward is in favor of bitcoin.”

Watch the full episode of The Block Live here. 

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take

• Disclaimer: The Block Research team has, is, and will be experimenting with the various protocols, projects, and applications mentioned in this series. The projects mentioned in our reports are not recommendations from our team and should not be misconstrued as investment advice. Many projects that appear in this series are highly experimental and, as such, will come with risks. Readers should evaluate their own risk tolerance before experimenting with these projects.
• At the request of various The Block Research members, we are experimenting with a weekly digest that summarizes recently launched projects and applications that our research team found interesting.
• This week’s digest looks at Atomic Odds and a host of new Keeper projects.

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