BlocksInform
Publicly traded crypto mining firm Hive Blockchain (CVE: HIVE) has sold its Norwegian subsidiary Kolos Norway AS to the local municipality, Narvik.
Under the share purchase agreement, Hive transferred all shares to the Narvik municipality along with a $200,000 payment.
The move comes after the Norwegian government scrapped a tax subsidy on electricity previously granted to crypto miners in November 2018.
This meant that it was improbable that Hive would be able to meet the development conditions of “this greenfield project”, according to an announcement by the company Monday. The land development rights were therefore impaired and and written down to a zero valuation from $15 million in March 2019.
Hive’s executive chairman Frank Holmes described the situation as “unfortunate”, adding that the deal was made before he or Darcy Daubaras, the firm’s chief financial officer, assumed their roles.
The company now plans to focus its mining operations on centers in Sweden and Iceland, which mine ethereum continuously on the cloud, according to the announcement.
Dubaras described ethereum mining as Hive’s “bread and butter” in an earnings call in March. The company has been ramping up bitcoin mining operations, with the purchase of 10,500 ASIC mining machines.
