The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) listed subsidiary of Jasmine International (JAS), called Jasmine Telecom Systems (JTS) has announced ambitious Bitcoin mining plans. JTS plans to become the largest Bitcoin miner of the ten nations comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The Thai telecom operator will install 500 Bitcoin mining machines over the course of the third quarter this year. In the following year, JTS aims to scale its mining operation ten-fold, installing a further 5,000 machines in partnership with the Jastrel Network at industrial locations around Thailand.
On the timing of this bullish expansion from integrated telecommunications and IT services, President of JTS, Dusit Srisangaoran said, “Now is a good time for JTS to invest in Bitcoin mining, given its widespread adoption and the incident in China that caused the hashrate to drop to an eight-month low.”
Based on these remarks it is clear that Mr. Srisangaoran has been planning to mine Bitcoin for some time, getting in at what many miners would consider an opportune moment, just after the Chinese ban and major hashrate decline.
JTS looks to bring 50,000 machines online, scaling its operation by 100x before the next Bitcoin halving. This would bring about 5 exahashes of power onto the network, which, even by the next halving’s standards, would be an impressive percentage of global mining power, and would make JTS the largest Bitcoin mining operation in Southeast Asia. At this scale, JTS could mine about 16,000 bitcoin per year.
Bitcoin mining is likely to act as the backbone to the JTS strategy of developing “new service businesses that will help to generate stable income and continuous growth.”