Bitcoin Mining Giant Bitmain is Tripling its Development Center in Israel

Bitmain, the Chinese bitcoin mining giant valued at $12 billion, is cementing its presence in Israel by planning to triple its employees at its domestic development center.

In an aggressive expansion of its research and development center in Ra’anana, a city in western Israel, Bitmain is looking to recruit over 40 employees to add its current 15 employees situated in the country, Israeli publication Globes reports.

Specifically, Bitmain is looking to pull in new blockchain researchers, senior software and security engineers, Python and JavaScript programmers as well as marketing personnel at a time when the erstwhile Chinese-centric firm is foraying toward friendlier jurisdictions around the world. Bitmain moved into a 20,000 square foot office in downtown San Jose, California, a notable expansion for the crypto firm now rubbing shoulders among Silicon Valley’s elite.

Established in 2016, the crypto giant’s Israel development center deals in blockchain research while overseeing mining pool ConnectBTC, Bitmain’s third mining pool launched in April 2017. The company also operates development centers in Hong Kong and Amsterdam.

Bitmain’s head of development at the Israel center Gadi Glickberg elaborated on the recruitment effort, suggesting that the time is right for crypto firms to proactively build and grow when the “global hype [surrounding cryptocurrencies] may have calmed relatively to December 2017”.

He added:

“The pursuit of talent in the field of digital currency is global. Bitmain has experienced tremendous growth in the past year thanks to the increasing adoption of Blockchain technology in general and, more specifically, of cryptocurrency.”

Bitmain, which is widely believed to be working toward launching an initial public offering (IPO) later this year that could value the company as much as $40 billion if it went public, concluded a $400 million funding round last month making it the world’s biggest crypto company with a present valuation of $12 billion.

Beyond its strategic expansions with North American mining centers in Washington State and Quebecas well as a new global subsidiary in Switzerland, Bitmain recently invested $50 million for a controlling stake in Opera, a popular web browser, a popular web browser recently introduced a built-in ethereum wallet within its mobile browser interface.