According to sources, Bitdeer Technologies, a digital currency mining operation, has recently acquired Le Freeport, which is a high-security display and storage facility in Singapore, for $28.4 million.
Jihan Wu, the chairman of Bitdeer, confirmed the acquisition of the vault through a text message after reports emerged about the purchase of Le Freeport.
The vault
Jihan Wu had co-founded Bitmain Technologies, but he later left the company and then co-founded another company called Matrixport.
In addition, he also serves as Bitdeer Technologies’ chairman, which recently acquired the maximum security Singaporean vault called Le Freeport for S$40 million, or $28.4 million.
The vault had originally been constructed in the same way as the high-security storage vaults located in Geneva and Luxembourg.
As a matter of fact, Freeport is also called the Fort Knox of Singapore for collectibles and fine art. It had been originally made for S$100 million.
Bitdeer’s latest acquisition saw a massive amount of debt paid off to the former owner of the vault Yves Bouvier and creditors, such as DBS.
Use and sale
Since 2017, the Singaporean security vault has been on sale and there have been a number of corporate clients of the high-security storage facility.
More than one-third of the storage space of Freeport had been rented by Christie’s, the luxury auction house, before 2018.
Freeport had also been leveraged once by Deutsche Bank for keeping gold bullion of more than $8.9 billion.
According to reports, Bouvier and the other shareholders of Freeport were able to receive $5 million from the sale of the storage facility.
But, there was no information about what Bitdeer intends to do with its acquisition, but Jihan Wu did confirm the initial report and said that they had indeed acquired the storage facility.
Business moves
The last year has seen Bitdeer Technologies make a number of business moves, such as making an investment in Texas in a facility back in May 2021 of about $25 million.
Bitdeer also announced cloud hosting five days later, which permits retail miners to use a single mining machine for generating revenue.
The Antbox products of the company had been unveiled at the end of June last year, while Filecoin mining services had also introduced by Bitdeer in October of the same year.
The sources that first revealed the purchase of Freeport in Singapore also disclosed that Bitdeer is exploring the idea of using a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) deal to go public, which would mean using a blank check firm.
Moreover, it is also important to note that Bitdeer is certainly not the company crypto firm to have acquired a bunker system, or a high-security vault.
A bunker in the Swiss mountains also belongs to Xapo, which is reportedly used for storing bitcoins on behalf of millionaires.
Likewise, reports emerged last week that Arsenal Digital Holdings, the bitcoin mining firm, had also purchased an underground data center located in Houston.
Some people think it is the infamous two-story bunker that belonged to Westland Oil.