Biggest Bitcoin data centre located in Georgia

Tbilisi opens Free Industrial Zone

Georgia is unveiling a Free Industrial Zone in capital Tbilisi, and the opening of the biggest Bitcoin data centre by virtual currency mining giant BitFury.

The Free Industrial Zone in Tbilisi aimed to attract international or local companies that produced products for export, the head of the Free Industrial Zone Giorgi Tabidze told Agenda.ge.

The main benefit of the Free Industrial Zone, which is located in Tbilisi, 17km from the city centre and close to the main airport, offered many benefits including preferential taxes for specific companies. For example, companies that produced products for export in the Zone will be exempt from taxes, except for lease tax and income tax [on the salaries of employed people].

“This could apply to Georgian companies who export their products abroad or foreign companies which import raw materials in Georgia - with preferential tax conditions – and produce in our country then export from Georgia to foreign markets,” said Tabidze.

Georgia expected to receive $100 million USD investments following the announcement of the Free Industrial Zone in Tbilisi.

Meanwhile, the biggest Bitcoin data centre, located in Gldani, was opened by the BitFury Group - a Bitcoin Blockchain infrastructure provider and transaction processing company. The firm invested $30 million USD to create the data centre in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Why was Georgia chosen for this high technology project?

“First of all, a very friendly business and investment climate, no corruption, a good taxation regime, as well as competitive energy costs and competitive labour cost,” said BitFury founder and CEO Valery Vavilov to Agenda.ge today.

This was BitFury’s second project in Georgia. The company produced Bitcoins in Georgia's Eastern city Gori; Bitcoins are a virtual currency that pays for goods or services on an online network. They are created online and stored electronically.

BitFury privatised 18 hectares of land in Tbilisi’s Gldani district to develop the Georgian Technology Park project. On this land, BitFury built a mega-data centre to process transactions using its latest generation 28 nm and the upcoming 16 nm ASIC chips.

After rigorous testing, the latest technologies and chips demonstrated "outstanding computing capabilities” and met all speed targets, according to BitFury founder and CEO Valery Vavilov.

“We are very excited to launch the mass production of our super 16nm ASIC Chip. The final results of our hard work have fully met our expectations. We understand that it will be nearly impossible for any older technology to compete with the performance of our new 16nm technology,” he said.

The company has developed its third generation immersion cooling system to create energy-saving data centre cooling systems for high performance computing applications. To cool the systems the company needed to use a large amount of electricity, and as the price of electricity was cheap in Georgia, BitFury selected this country as a preferential place to operate.

Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili noted today at the opening ceremony that Georgia’s improved investment climate encouraged BitFury to expand its activities here.

BitFury’s activities in the Georgian market prove that the investment environment is improving in our country. Our Government has started to encourage investors. Creating the Free Industrial Zone in Tbilisi will be an additional stimulus for other companies to implement investments here,” said Garibashvili.

BitFury opened the first data centre in July 2014 in Georgia’s eastern city Gori. The 20 MW data centre served bitcoin transactions with about 6,000 servers every day.

It was confidential to announce the number of bitcoins the centre issued each day, however BitFury’s profit sometimes reached $300,000 USD per day, revealed Blockchain statistics. (agenda.ge)