Beijing based Bitmain is among one of the biggest companies to contribute to the growth of cryptocurrencies, especially in the earlier days. One of the biggest names in cryptocurrency mining devices and cryptocurrency mining pools, Bitmain’s contribution to the industry is immense. Bitmain is the company behind the Antminer ASIC hardware devices, as well as Antpool - the largest cryptocurrency mining pool in the world. Reportedly, Bitmain is involved in setting up mining centers in the US now.

Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu is involved in the setting up of the Ant Creek mining center in Tumwater, Washington. Local newspaper Union Bulletin reports that Ant Creek LLC will be building a ‘blockchain facility’ at Port of Walla Walla in Washington. Port Executive Director Patrick Reay has revealed that the Port of Walla Walla administration has been working in collaboration with Ant Creek for close to 6 months now. They aim at developing a Blockchain facility. If the contract between the two parties is approved, Ant Creek will lease land by the end of 2018 with an option to purchase 40 acres.

Reay further stated that this partnership between Ant Creek and the Walla Walla County aims “to generate assessed value and create jobs.” Moreover, Port officials estimate that the alleged Bitcoin-mining facility will bring in $7-10 mln of private investment, and 15-20 full-time jobs. Union Bulletin reports that a number of companies have been setting up their operations in rural regions of Washington, but have been facing problems due to falling short of electricity. However, this won’t be a problem for Ant Creek’s operations as the city is not an electric purveyor as per Reay.

Bitmain is yet to comment on this partnership and hasn’t commented if the company is directly involved. However, business data website companies-number reveals that Jihan Wu, the co-founder of Bitmain is the only ‘Governing Person’ for Ant Creek LLC. Reports in the past had suggested that Bitmain was looking forward to a US expansion.

It wasn’t just Bitmain as a number of other cryptocurrency organizations have been moving out of China or expanding businesses beyond the nation’s borders because of the hostility they face from the Chinese government. The government of China banned all cryptocurrency exchanges in the nation last year - and has now been working on limiting power supply to cryptocurrency miners. Another Chinese cryptocurrency giant Huobi too is expanding operations to the US as the company sets up an office in the Silicon Valley.

Bitmain has been operating cryptocurrency mining centers in Canada since 2016 and if all goes will, this might be their first step towards setting US-based operations. The company is huge in the world of cryptocurrency. A recent statistic from Bernstein, an investment research firm, claims that Bitmain holds between 70 to 80% of market share when it comes to cryptocurrency mining hardware and ASIC devices. This is an industry which is rapidly growing and even major names such as Samsung are slowly entering the mining hardware business.