British mining company joins the Bitcoin mining arms race, challenging China's leading position.

As the Bitcoin hash rate continues to hit record highs this year, Bitcoin miners from around the world seem optimistic about the future of cryptocurrency. In the past few weeks, a series of large-scale mining operations have been constantly exposed, including a 240% expansion of the UK mining company Argo Blockchain.

Argo Blockchain has announced that it will fully replace its previous order of mining machines. The company initially ordered 5,000 Antminer S17 machines, and now it is upgrading to a massive order of 10,000 of the more powerful and latest Antminer T17 machines.

According to a report, the updated order will increase the company's mining hash power by 240%. Mike Edwards, the Executive Chairman of Argo Blockchain, commented on the mining business expansion:

This updated order represents a significant expansion of our mining infrastructure and will position us as one of the largest publicly listed cryptocurrency mining companies globally. Upgrading from S17 to T17 will significantly increase our mining capacity.

Bitcoin Mining Continues to Thrive

Argo is not the only cryptocurrency mining company planning a large-scale expansion. Recently, Russian mining company RMC announced plans to establish a large mining facility in northern Russia.

Dmitry Marinichev, the founder of RMC and also a Russian internet ombudsman, stated:

The facility will account for around 20% of the overall Bitcoin network hash rate.

It is understood that RMC conducted an ICO fundraising in 2017, issuing Russian Miner Coin, raising over $43 million, making it the most successful ICO in Russian history.

Marinichev aims to obtain one-fifth of the entire Bitcoin production, a move that may lead to active expansions by mining companies in the UK and around the world as mentioned in this article.

As reported by ABM, U.S. mining company Layer 1 recently secured a $50 million funding, aiming to challenge the Chinese mining industry further.

The company is optimistic that further diversifying the scale of the Chinese network and utilizing underutilized renewable energy sources can help the U.S. capture over 15% of the Bitcoin hash rate.

In addition, Bitmain is also actively expanding into overseas markets and recently opened a 33,000-acre Bitcoin mining facility in Texas. It is reportedly the world's largest Bitcoin mining facility.

Bitmain expects the new facility to create up to 400 job opportunities in Houston within the next two years and plans to invest up to $500 million over the next seven years.

Hash Rate Continues to Hit Record Highs

Although the above-mentioned large-scale mining facilities have not officially come online yet, Bitcoin's hash rate has already reached new historical highs this year.

Last week, the hash rate reached 114.3 EH/s, experienced a slight decline afterward but still maintains a significant long-term upward trend. It is evident that with global mining industry spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Bitcoin mining equipment, company leaders are undoubtedly confident in the bright future of cryptocurrencies.

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