The following is a transcript of a live interview with Genesis Mining CEO Marco Streng and CoinGeek's Becky Liggero that took place at the Malta Blockchain Summit Spring Edition, a two-day event of networking, exhibiting and deep learning held on May 23-24, 2019.
Genesis Mining is one of the leading hash power providers in the world, offering cryptocurrency mining capacities in every range - for newcomer, interested home miners, as well as large scale investors.
Marco Streng discovered Bitcoin in his dormroom in Munich, Germany, while studying to become a mathematician in 2011, when he installed and began operating a small-scale mining rig. Fast forward a few years later, and Genesis Mining is the world’s largest cloud mining provider, with over 2 million active customers, 800+ employees, and operations in Iceland, Sweden, USA, and Asia.
Becky: Let's start by talking about Genesis group and what aspects of the blockchain industry it encompasses.
Marco: Genesis Group has grown a lot in the last years. It consists of a lot of a growing amount of companies. By now, I think everyone knows is Genesis Mining , which is the flagship and one of the largest mining companies in the blockchain world. Genesis started in 2013, and the group has grown ever since now also in other sectors, like for example, high performance computing. We have started the Genesis cloud, which makes use of our computing resources and delivers high performance computing solutions to the masses, and also for example, TQR as an exchange and many other companies, like for example, the Blockchain Infrastructure Fund. And from then on, I mean, Genesis Mining has more than two million customers right now. And I think we are the leading provider for mining and our goal is to really let everybody in this space have the possibility to start mining and to join.
Becky: Yeah. That's great. I think the role that miners play in the crypto ecosystem, people don't realize how important it is.
Marco: Yeah. That's right.
Becky: So tell me how Genesis Mining grows the ecosystem ... it's kind of an obvious question, but to allow the average person to be able to easily mine. What benefits does this have in growing the ecosystem today?
Marco: I mean, it all started with Satoshi [Nakamoto]'s idea. I mean, the vision was that Bitcoin and blockchain can be validated in a decentralized way, and that's what the mining was about. And that ideally could happen with everybody using his own computer at home and mine. Of course, at one point people realized, "Oh, the industry is getting [crowded]... or people have an advantage if they move, for example, to Iceland or to a place where it's much lower electricity than in the average home." And also people realize if they build large scale facilities, they have a lot of advantage because of economy of scale.
Marco: So that was kind of this trend where the large mining giants have a big advantage. And that made this de-centralization more centralized, and well, we basically wanted to work against this centralization. We wanted to make it possible for everyone to have that gains and that efficiency increase and all these benefits that you have as a large scale miner, but offer it to everyone in the world. Everybody should have the right to participate and to mine.
Becky: I love it. Okay. And Malta. Why Malta? Why do you think that this is a fantastic place to base a blockchain business?
Marco: I think it's remarkable to see Malta really stepping forward in a very, how can I say, progressive way. They want to make this the blockchain island and they are putting a lot of incentive and they're putting a lot of efforts into the regulatory framework to basically give the companies that are coming here more regulatory certainty, which is an essential driver for that.
Marco: The big businesses in this space need certainty because it's an important decision where they are, what they do. And I think that it's also a great example for them to show other countries, being a good example for other countries, and we will have probably other countries to follow that. And that sets a whole new push on a global scale.
Becky: Yeah, it's all about the global scale. Marco, thank you so much for joining me today. I really do appreciate it.
Marco: Thanks for having me. Thank you.