Chinese crypto mining giant Bitmain is reportedly looking to hire an additional 40 staff members for its development center in Israel. The move would effectively “triple the size” of Bitmain’s current workforce in the mining station, which was established in 2016.
Bitmain’s recent recruitment efforts are part of its plans to add more personnel to its Ra’anana mining center in Israel, which is managed by Gadi Glikberg, the company’s VP for international sales and marketing.
Commenting on the cryptocurrency market’s declining prices, after reaching record-level highs in December, 2017, Glikberg revealed he believes that “bitcoin mining somewhat cushions the fall in the bitcoin exchange rate.”
Betting on “Know-How and Capabilities”
Currently, the estimated annual revenue of the world’s bitcoin mining industry is of around $4.5 billion. The yearly cost of global crypto mining operations is approximately $3.5 billion, which yields the evolving industry a profit of about 20%. Glikberg noted that Bitmain has been having huge momentum this past year, adding that:
The world may be in a period of relative calm after the great hype of December 2017, but for the major companies in the field this is a golden opportunity to plan, build and grow, and Bitmain has identified the potential of Israeli know-how and capabilities to contribute to the company's global effort.
Glikberg added that Bitmain realizes the “potential of Israeli know-how and capabilities,” which could greatly help the mining company further expand its global operations. Moreover, management at Bitmain is specifically looking to hire highly experienced security engineers, senior programmers well-versed in JavaScript and Python programming languages, blockchain specialists, and quality assurance (QA) professionals.
The Chinese mining giant, valued at $12 billion, already has a solid foundation given that it’s the world’s largest designer of ASIC chips used for cryptocurrency mining. Reportedly, Bitmain’s profit margin was of around $3-4 billion in 2017 from the sales of its proprietary Antminer hardware. As covered, it recently invested $50 million in Opera’s IPO.
The company’s development center in Ra’anana focuses on blockchain research, artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning through the Sophon project, and another one of its mining pools called ConnectBTC. Notably, one of Bitmain’s clients is Blockchain Mining Ltd, a company whose stocks are listed (TLV:BLCM) on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
