GMO Internet, Inc, which is the Japanese internet services company widely known for being the parent of web security firm GlobalSign, is reaping the benefits of a long-term investment in its crypto-related sectors.
The IT giant business made public its report about the third quarter of the year (Q3) on Monday, and the results are awfully encouraging. In fact, the document goes as far as saying that the period represented a “historical performance” on its crypto business in spite of the industry enduring its worst and longest drought so far.
GMO has a crypto exchange and also manages mining equipment production, two promising businesses that have earned the company 2.6 billion yen (the equivalent of $22.8 million) in revenue in the third quarter only 12 months after their inception to the market.
Glowing Results on GMO Coin Exchange Performance
The exchange, named GMO Coin, has been very busy performing trading operations, with over 205,000 users trading almost 90 billion yen, or nearly $781 million, in the month of October. According to the Asian firm, the QoQ (Quarter on Quarter) profits went up 34.4 percent.
When it comes to the mining segment of the company, there are good pieces of news, but not as positive as the exchange case. The QoQ revenues also went up, but the second and third quarters have represented a decline over what the firm made in the Q1.
When looking for possible explanations for the decrease when compared to the Q1, GMO seems to think that the reasons are a “worsening external environment” and “increasing depreciation cost,” in that order. The collapse of Bitcoin and other minable altcoins since January cannot be completely ignored in any analysis.
GMO offered some statistics in its report: During October, the mining hashrate was in the neighborhood of 674 petahash per second (PH/s.) However, the firm has already stated its intention to increase the results closer to 800 PH/S before the end of the year. Further complicating matters – at least regarding new mining rings – is the delay of electronic materials to produce the GMO Miner B3, which was announced in July and previously scheduled for October.
GMO recently announced the creation of a stable coin that is tied to Japanese fiat, with the goal of targeting international transactions. The initiative will begin functioning in 2019.
Enhanced Security
Following March’s notification by the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA, which is the one in charge of regulating crypto exchanges) GMO Coin was forced to make their services, especially offering risk management systems reports with frequency, better than they were at the time Coincheck suffered a hacking attack in January. By now, and thanks to that development, GMO Coin has put together a “Group Information Security Audit Office” to earn reliability and trustworthiness while protecting customer information.
Other prominent mining companies have also provided reports of their performance on Q3. In the case of the known semiconductor producer AMD, the revenues were practically non-existent on the timeframe, while Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Hut 8, headquartered in Canada, did very well while reporting a profit of $13.5 million for Q3.
By Andres Chavez
