Chinese lottery services provider 500.com has purchased a series of Bitcoin and Ethereum mining machines for a total of RMB226.3m (£25.1m/€23.9m/$35.0m) to support its expansion into cryptocurrency.
500.com entered a definitive agreement with a subsidiary of BitDeer to secure 1,923 S17 Bitcoin mining machines for RMB31.3m, with these deployed and operational in Xinjiang, China.
The provider also agreed a deal to purchase 2,000 new ETH mining machines for a total consideration of RMB195.0m.
This agreement will see 100 Ethereum mining machines delivered between May and June this year, followed by 150 in each July and August, while the remaining 1,600 will arrive between September and December.
The purchases mark 500.com’s latest movement in the cryptocurrency sector, with the provider having this week also received 356.04342 Bitcoins and $11.5m in cash through a private placement transaction with Good Luck Information.
The placement, agreed in December, will see Good Luck Information receive 85,572,963 newly issued Class A ordinary shares in 500.com.
Last week, 500.com acquired Blockchain Alliance Technologies, owner of the BTC.com platform, while the provider in January also set out plans to acquire $14.4m worth of Bitcoin mining machines, adding a further 15,900 machines from two additional sellers this month.
