I clicked on the link thinking. "Oh, some country is using Bitcoin as a reserve currency. That could be interesting."<p>But no. Georgia is allowing an American company mine Bitcoin at scale. It uses a lot of power and a lot of infrastructure. But isn't a huge bet or anything interesting.
> Georgia provided land and cheap electricity so Bitfury, an American company, could set up a Bitcoin mining center in Tbilisi.<p>I hope they realize the digital currency doesn't necessarily "stay" in Georgia. Either way, the prime minister provided a loan out of his own investment fund, and it's been paid back. Not sure they are betting big on crypto, but they are using 10% of their electricity for it...
Without knowing the absolute production capacity and utilization pre-Bitcoin / post-Bitcoin; that 10% isn't a very useful metric.<p>If Bitcoin is using locally underutilized electricity, I don't see anything wrong with this adventure.
I have some friends who started working on interesting projects in the crypto space after Bitcoin 'died'. It seems to me there is still some potential for innovation in this area, as evidenced by the market sizing. Just need to cut some of the ICO/marketing cruft away and be realistic about its usecases.
Nice touch on referring to Georgia as a "former Soviet Republic". The article must have then described Bitfury as a company from a former British colony :)