Digital Currency Group Launches Fortitude Mining

Digital Currency Group, often dubbed the Standard Oil of Crypto, announced on Wednesday the spinout of a new mining subsidiary called Fortitude Mining.

Fortitude Mining will be a wholly-owned unit of DCG, with a focus on “achieving strong returns by mining Bitcoin and other high-growth digital assets in emerging ecosystems with attractive return profiles.”

As part of its establishment, Fortitude began as a semi-independent segment of DCG’s first mining initiative, Foundry, which has concentrated on self-mining over the past five years. Andrea Childs, former senior vice president of operations and marketing at Foundry, will lead Fortitude, while Mike Colyer remains CEO of Foundry.

Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of DCG, remarked, “Spinning out Fortitude Mining provides greater growth opportunities to further scale the business, including raising capital, making additional investments, and attracting top-tier talent.”

Self-mining, or solo mining, refers to the process of mining tokens using personal equipment. This method represents a small portion of the BTC mining industry, which has grown into a competitive and capital-intensive field.

Nevertheless, various proof-of-work chains are being developed to simplify the process for individual miners, along with startups such as Solo Satoshi and Compass Mining aimed at making home mining more feasible.

Fortitude intends to reinvest its annual revenues in new mining equipment and site acquisitions.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Rochester, New York, Foundry is now the largest bitcoin mining pool, contributing over 30% of the total network hashrate. Its closest competitor, AntPool, holds approximately 18%.

The Block reached out to DCG for more information and will provide updates as available.