Bitfury

The Idea: Vertically integrated Bitcoin infrastructure, designing its own ASIC chips, manufacturing miners, and operating industrial-scale data centers. The bet was that Bitcoin's security layer would require purpose-built silicon and institutional-grade operations, not hobbyist rigs.

Early Traction: By 2014–2015 Bitfury was already one of the top three global Bitcoin miners and the only major Western competitor to China's Bitmain and Canaan in ASIC design.

Peak Stats: Hit a ~$2.1B valuation in its 2021 round (led by Galaxy Digital and Macquarie), with lifetime funding north of $170M. At peak it ran data centers across Georgia, Iceland, Norway, and Canada with 100+ MW of capacity and roughly 0.5–1 EH/s of self-mining hashrate.

Status Today: Active. Bitfury has retrenched from the flashy growth story, with much of its value migrating to spinouts most notably Cipher Mining (NASDAQ: CIFR), which took the US mining operations public via SPAC in 2021.