Because Bitcoin is lumbering around $7,000 now after swelling to near $20,000 late in 2017, there seems to be an air of negative sentiment around it and its underlying decentralized ledger technology called blockchain. Be that as it may, cryptocurrency miners may wish Bitcoin was nearly three-times its current value, but they certainly aren’t complaining that it isn’t still sitting at $1,000 like it was just over a year ago. Fact is, mining can still be a lucrative endeavor.
Tech holding company Datametrex AI Limited (TSX-V: DM) has its hands in many kettles, including artificial intellingence (as it’s name suggests), blockchain technology and industrial scale cryptocurrency mining. The latter is through Datametrex’s wholly owned subsidiary Ronin Blockchain Corp.
Late in March, Michael Frank, a key advisor to Datametrex in recent years, was appointed as chief executive at Ronin. Frank, who also serves on the board at AnalytixInsight (TSX-V: ALY) has extensive experience advising upstart tech companies and has several mergers under his belt, including an exit strategy previously with TurboTax and QuickBooks owner Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU).
Frank is wasting little time in moving Ronin ahead in its efforts to become a major player in the industrial blockchain mining sector from a headquarters in Canada. On Tuesday, Datametrex reported that Ronin has commenced mining operations in Asia and Quebec, activating 150 megawatts of capacity across the regions.
Cryptominers get paid by solving complex cryptographic problems to create a data “block” that is time-stamped and attached to the previous block, generating an immutable bookkeeping system stored across a litany of locations. Computational power at favorable energy rates is a key component of returning value on mining activities given that the electric bill is usually the biggest monthly expense for a mining outfit. Quebec and Asia are two areas well known for inexpensive electricity to power rows of rows of computers running 24/7/365 solving the equations.
Frank noted that the launch of the mining operations came in ahead of schedule and completes the first phase of Ronin establishing a diversified GPU mining footprint on its pathway to scaling its capacity.
Like most others in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space, shares of DM have been trending lower after reaching multi-year highs late 2017/early 2018. On Tuesday, shares found some traction, gaining 8.7% to close the day at 12 cents.
