Layer1, a cryptocurrency infrastructure and investment platform, just secured $50 million from many industry stakeholders during their Series A funding round. According to a report by Fortune, Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder, early Shastra Ventures investor and venture capitalist, together with other industry players committed the mentioned amount. This was done in order to build a BTC mining facility that will be wind-powered in West Texas. Right now, Layer1 wants to vertically integrate a mining operation in the US.
Alexander Liegl, co-founder of Layer1, highlighted the fact that Texas has competitive power prices. He went on to say that there is no business that takes advantage of this at the moment in the mining industry, mainly because of appropriate cooling technology needed. Liegl also said:
“We expect our chips to be competitive for at least eight years now. You want to have your own chips in hand. We also have our own electricity substations: effectively that’s as close as you can get to owning your own power plant.”
Layer1 managed to raise substantial funds so now it wants to allocate them for the construction of a proprietary crypto mining and power substation infrastructure. This will be done in a partnership with a Chinese semiconductor company that will help produce mining chips.
During December 2018, we saw Layer 1 with a seed funding round that was backed by Thiel and that raised $2.1 million. Raised funds were then aimed to help develop programmable money and applications for store-of-value.
