Bitfury strengthens connections to the US government by appointing Brian Fors to the consultant

Bitfury strengthens connections to the US government by appointing Brian Fors to the consultant

The one with director and former advisor to the White House, Brian Forde, joins the board of Bitfury’s consultant-a Bitcoin company that already has relationships with the US government. While most people know Bitfury as a miner, the company has developed into a successful full-service blockchain agency.

At the end of November, Bitfury announced that Brian Forse will be added to the advisors’ board. In addition to the typical announcement of this message («We Are Thrilled» etc.) underlines this personnel that Bitfury has become one of the most interesting, best-financed and best networked Bitcoin company.

In the cryptocurrency scene, Brian Forse is anything but an unknown person. He was the director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (with). That with Media Lab is one of the most important centers in Bitcoin development. It finances the work of Bitcoin Core Maintainer Van der Laan and the Core developer Cory Fields and Gavin Andresen. The status of Andresen is currently unknown.

With all of this, this tries to neutrality. It is not known that the institute would ever have an attitude regarding Bitcoin protocol development. However, there was violent criticism for the Chainanchor working group, which develops a plan to bind transactions on identities and also consider to bribe the Bitcoin Miner to minel only legitimized transactions.

At least as important as the position of with will have been his contacts in the White House for Brian Forde’s appointment on the board of Bitfury. Because you will not find a company in Bitcoin-Land, which has made it as much as Bitfury to be a strategy, to feel with the US government. Not only that the company is a seat in Washington D.C. maintains and carried out some projects with governments. She also included several former government and government advisors to her team.

Bitfury’s “Global Chief Communication Officer” Jamie Elizabeth Smith is most famous. Smith was formerly the President’s spokeswoman, deputy press officer of the White House and press director for Hillary Clinton’s campaign 2008. The representative, Sam Youngman recently provided to her, is also likely to be known in government circles. «Youngman is an experienced political reporter in the White House with more than 15 years of experience,» said the press release for his attitude in mid -October.

Further connections to the government can be found in the consultant board. Jason Weinstein is a former deputy general lawyer of the crime department of the Ministry of Justice; Tomicah Tillman was a speech writer for Hillary Clinton and is now director of the Bretton Woods II program of the political Think Tank New American; The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto is one of the most influential economic advisors of the governments of emerging countries; and Jim Newsome was the chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

And what does all of this tell us, except that it is a unique selling point from Bitfury?

If you love conspiracy theories, you can of course spin the story from this how the US government infiltrates Bitcoin. If you want, you can still decorate this story through a picture that the Bitfury Team shows how NSA director Michael Roger meets Global Leadership Summit in New York three years ago. In a way, as a taxpayer you can even expect your own government to try to put your fingers in such an exciting, valuable and important phenomenon like Bitcoin.

A request to the press department, which is why Bitfury collects ex-government employees, unfortunately remained unanswered. But I assume that better than a conspiracy theory applies the simple fact that these personal details for Bitfury’s business status make sense. Because governments are clearly part of the target group of Bitfury.

The company is actually known as the manufacturer of mining hardware. With its own ASIC chips, Bitfury is one of the largest miners in the world and represents 10 percent of the global hashrates. According to rumors, Bitfury was behind the Pool Ghash.Io, which in 2014 was the most powerful pool in the world and briefly reached more than 50 percent of the global hashrate.

In fact, Bitfury has long since developed beyond a mining company. According to its own description, Bitfury is a «full service blockchain technology company». The company has received $ 90 million investment capital-and is therefore one of the four best-financed companies in the crypto area. With this capital, Bitfury has developed a wide range of services that include, for example, Blockchain Data Mining (to calculate a risk scoring for transactions and to break anonymity and mixer), blockchain asset and registration of land rights and possession on the blockchain.

With this portfolio, Bitfury is incredibly successful. Alone what the company has achieved this year is impressed – and possibly demonstrated how useful political contacts are for business. In April the company began a project with the government of Georgia to design and implement «a blockchain-based land right system.“In September, Bitfury presented a presentation at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. In November, Bitfury became a member of a blockchain working group of the World Economic Forum, in which she will work with Thomas Hendrik, ex-President of Estonia, Ma Jun from the Chinese Central Bank and many other important personalities. And in the same month Bitfury signed a deal with the consultants from Ernst and Young (EY) to develop software for the customers of EY.

The mining, it seems, was only the door opener for Bitfury. The company is a prime example of how a Bitcoin company can develop from the Miner to Full Service Provider.