SoftBank Group has made a $50 million investment into industrial-scale Bitcoin mining company Cipher Mining.
Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, has opined that this is a "huge endorsement" for the diversified Bitcoin/AI model from SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son.
"Further evidence that Bitcoin is emerging as the hurdle rate for innovators," he said.
Cipher CEO Tyler Page said that the company was thrilled to welcome the Japanese financial giant as an investor.
$160 million Bitcoin loss
Son, the third-richest Japanese person, initially invested in Bitcoin at the peak of the 2017 bubble. Asreported by U.Today, he ended up losing as much as $160 million after deciding to sell his Bitcoin holdings at a huge loss due to viewing it as a distraction.
Obviously, the disastrous Bitcoin bet hardly made a dent in his massive net worth, which currently stands at a whopping $31.3 billion
In 2020, hepredicted that digital currencies would be "useful," but he stopped short of singling out a single token.
Softbank's AI bet
Earlier this week, it was reported that SoftBank was preparing to make a staggering $25 billion million investment in OpenAI. The terms of the investment are yet to be fleshed out, according to the New York Times.
The Japanese behemoth is also part of the $100 billion AI project called Stargate.
