Bitcoin mining giant Bitfury has taken another step in its transformation into an enterprise blockchain software developer. After previously releasing open-source software that anyone could use for free to run a permissioned blockchain similar to bitcoin, Bitfury today launched Exonum Enterprise, the first such blockchain built from the ground up to let large corporations streamline their business and increase transparency using the bitcoin blockchain.
But the real business opportunity for Bitfury lies in its first business, building specialized computers that audit the bitcoin blockchain in exchange for the cryptocurrency. Early movers in the enterprise blockchain category, also known as blockchain-as-a-service, include Microsoft and Amazon, both of which have offices dedicated to helping clients build blockchain solutions powered by their lucrative cloud computing services. Last year, Amazon generated a total of $25.7 billion in revenue on cloud computing, and Microsoft generated $30.1 billion in revenue.
Amsterdam-based Bitfury, on the other hand, generated $500 million revenue last year largely from selling bitcoin mining hardware and gives enterprises the choice to run on partially decentralized cloud-computing servers or traditional on-premise servers, with an added layer of security provided by miners around the world using Bitfury’s own hardware and others to mine the Bitcoin blockchain.
If Amazon and Microsoft stand to profit by selling their own cloud services to audit the bitcoin transactions their customers generate, Bitfury could drive enterprise value to the bitcoin blockchain and the miners that secure it.
“Usually, enterprises use private blockchains for special purposes, for example in governments as different kinds of registry systems,” says Bitfury chief executive and cofounder Valery Vavilov. “But we are also using bitcoin blockchain anchoring to get bitcoin blockchain security for our private blockchain.”
Bitfury was founded in 2011 and was among the first companies to start generating revenue selling bitcoin miners that expend computing power to help audit the bitcoin blockchain, and in exchange earn their owners’ bitcoin in reward. From its headquarters in Amsterdam, the company has raised $170 million and was valued last year at more than a billion dollars, earning it a place on the Forbes Blockchain 50 list of billion-dollar companies using blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Source: Forbes