The Supreme People\’s Court of China ordered hosting provider Chuangshiji Technology Limited to return to Genesis Mining 485,681 GPUs, a dispute dating back to 2018.
The GPUs in question are MSI RX 470 8GB, which on eBay averages between $400 and $500. Thus, the value of the equipment could reach $200 million.
Theoretically these GPUs would deliver a hash rate of 14 TH/s. If used to mine Ethereum, they would generate roughly $1 million in gross daily profit (given current mining difficulty and an assumed energy cost of about $0.06 per kWh).
Genesis Mining was founded in 2013 as a business focused on providing cloud-mining services. In 2017 its founders—Marco Streng and Marco Kron—together with partners launched cryptocurrency mining operations.
In its early days the venture had no brand — only in April 2021 did the partners present it as Genesis Digital Assets.
According to the company\’s website, as of July 2021 it possessed 143 MW of computing capacity, delivering 2.6 EH/s of hash rate. In the following 11 months the firm planned to bring online equipment that would increase the metric by 5.5 EH/s.
When Streng and Kron launched their own mining operations, Genesis Mining signed a deal with Chuangshiji Technology Limited, which provides hosting services for equipment in Jiangxi province, China.
Since September 2018 Chuangshiji stopped paying profits from mining to its client. According to court documents, the alleged reason was Genesis Mining\’s failure to settle electricity bills.
In May 2019 the company filed a lawsuit in Fuzhou. It sought return of 560,000 GPUs and 60,580 AntMiner S9 ASIC miners. The firm also accused Chuangshiji of breach of contract and unlawful appropriation of equipment.
Genesis Mining said it had decided to sever ties with the hosting provider, but Chuangshiji refused to return the equipment and even sold some of the devices.
In 2020 the Jiangxi High People\’s Court ordered Chuangshiji to return 100,000 GPUs to Genesis Mining\’s Chinese subsidiary and 385,000 GPUs to the firm\’s Hong Kong unit.
Chuangshiji attempted to appeal the decision to the Supreme People\’s Court of China. It argued that it owned a joint venture with Genesis Mining and thus had rights to part of the equipment. The provider failed to present compelling evidence in its favour.
It is unclear where the Genesis Mining devices are now located.
Earlier in July 2021, Genesis Digital Assets closed a funding round of $125 million.