Sources claim that Bitdeer Technologies has bought Le Freeport, a Singapore high-security storage facility and display center, for $28.4million. Bitdeer’s chairman, Jihan Wu, confirmed the vault acquisition via a text message following the reports that revealed the mining firm purchased Le Freeport.
Bitdeer purchases Maximum Security Vault le Freeport from Yves Bouvier (DBS)
After the co-founder of Bitmain Technologies Jihan Wu left the company, he co-founded a firm called Matrixport and he’s also the chairman of Bitdeer Technologies. Bloomberg reports that Bitdeer spent S$40million ($28.4million) to purchase the Le Freeport vault, which is the highest security vault.
The vault’s design was inspired by the vaults in Geneva and Luxembourg. Freeport has also been dubbed “Singapore’s Fort Knox for fine art and collectibles.” Freeport was originally built for S$100 million and the latest acquisition by Bitdeer paid off a significant amount of debt to creditors like DBS and the vaults former owner Yves Bouvier.
Since 2017, the vault was up for sale. The high-security storage space has attracted a lot of corporate clients. Before 2018, the luxury auction house Christie’s once rented more than a third of Freeport’s storage space. Deutsche Bank leveraged Freeport once to store more than $8.9 Billion in gold bullion.
Bloomberg’s Ranjeetha Pakiam, Chanyaporn Chanjaroen, and Zheping Huang detail that Bouvier and Freeport’s other shareholders “received about S$5 million from the sale.” However, the sources do not disclose what Bitdeer aims to do with the facility, but following the initial report, Jihan Wu confirmed the Freeport purchase with the Bloomberg authors via text.
Bitdeer has made many business decisions over the last year. One of these was investing $25million in Texas-based facility that will be operational in May 2021. Five days later, Bitdeer announced cloud hosting, which allows “retail miners to generate revenue with 1 mining machine.”
At the end of June 2021, Bitdeer revealed the company’s Antbox products and last October, the company introduced Filecoin mining services. Sources who revealed the acquisition of Freeport Singapore also stated that Bitdeer was looking into going public via an SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) through a blank check.
Bitdeer isn’t the only cryptocurrency firm that has purchased a bunker or vault system. Xapo’s bunker in the Swiss mountains is just as extravagant and reportedly millionaires stored their bitcoins there. Reports last week indicated that Arsenal Digital Holdings, a Bitcoin mining firm (OTCMKTS : ADHI), had acquired an underground data centre outside of Houston. Some people suspect it’s Westland Oil’s infamous two-story subterranean campus fallout bunker.
What do you think about Bitdeer acquiring ‘Singapore’s Fort Knox’ otherwise known as Le Freeport? Please comment below to let us know your thoughts on this topic.
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