After Bitcoin, John McAfee to Start Ethereum Mining

MGT Capital Investments, a New York-based investment firm headed by John McAfee, has announced that it will soon begin mining Ethereum (ETH).

MGT started mining bitcoin in July 2016. In September 2016, the company provided data showing that they were able to mine about 90 bitcoins per month. At the time, MGT said that the bitcoins they mined each month were worth $55,000. However, as the price of the cryptocurrency has grown, the value of 90 bitcoins has reached about $236,000.

According to Business Insider, investors usually think of this listed company as a cybersecurity company. McAfee also became famous in this field because of the antivirus software products launched by McAfee LLC.

McAfee has recently begun to shift his focus to the cryptocurrency sector. Last month, the cybersecurity expert said that MGT will make Bitcoin mining profitable and move it to the company's core activity, setting a goal to become the world's largest mining company.

McAfee told Bloomberg:

We will definitely be profitable by the end of the year. We will gain experience and expertise from Bitcoin mining and apply blockchain to our security products.

After McAfee was appointed as the company's CEO, MGT's stock price rose 63% in a single day. The cybersecurity expert is confident about his role at MGT:

I don't know if there's anyone better qualified for this job than me. I've never failed in business before, and I certainly won't fail now.

ETH mining, like Bitcoin, also uses computers to solve complex calculations. On June 23, MGT announced that they had reached an agreement with Bit5ive LLC to purchase 60 graphics processor-based mining computers for Ethereum mining.

McAfee said in a statement:

We firmly believe that as digital currencies evolve and grow in value, our company will be uniquely positioned as the premier provider of advanced blockchain processing capabilities.

McAfee is one of a few who predict the rise of cryptocurrencies. In early June, billionaire Marc Cuban said that the recent price growth of Bitcoin is a bubble. In addition, Panos Mourdoukoutas, an economics professor at Long Island University Post, New York, also predicted that "the Bitcoin bubble will burst."

McAfee, on the other hand, said:

No matter how much governments and regulators complain, there will still be a world of standard alternative currencies. Bitcoin is one of them... and it can't be a bubble.