Bitcoin mining might soon gain a new player: telecommunication giant Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of one of the largest U.S. telcos, T-Mobile.
“We will engage in digital monetary photosynthesis soon,” Dirk Röder, Head of web3 infrastructure and solutions of T-Mobile’s Telekom MMS, said during the BTC Prague conference last week. When asked by the conference host if T-Mobile is mining bitcoin, he answered, “We will.”
The announcement comes as the mining sector has experienced a tremendous roller-coaster ride, with 2021’s bull market, subsequent crypto winter and the latest halving, which lowered the bitcoin rewards by half.
Röder didn’t specify where or at what capacity his company will be mining bitcoin, but the entrance of such a large corporation has both positive and potentially negative implications for the industry.
Deutsche Telekom has been very active in the digital assets sector for years. It has been running validators on networks such as Polygon, Q, Flow, Celo, Chainlink and Ethereum. The telecom giant also started Energy Web Chain last year, which the company said was “the world’s first public blockchain designed explicitly for the energy sector” and will help to create a “more decentralized, digitalized, and decarbonized energy system.”
Röder also said during the conference that his company has been running a Bitcoin node and Lightning nodes since 2023.
The move has given the sentiment of the bitcoin mining community a boost, as T-Mobile (TMUS)—which has more than $200 billion market cap—participating in making Bitcoin safer is positive for the network. However, it also poses the question of whether such a large player entering the arena will ramp up the competition for the incumbent miners who are already facing tougher competition.
T-Mobile’s Web3 journey has previously seen some controversy, as the company faced several lawsuits after customers of T-Mobile, along with its competitor AT&T, had been victims of “SIM swapping” attacks.
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