In addition, news from today in Sweden is saying that KnC just let go of twelve full time staff members, doing away with a fifth of their employees apparently due to Chinese mining competition, says KnC CEO Sam Cole. In the article which was just published, it says (Google translated):
One of Sweden's most hyped startups terminates a dozen full-time employees, confirms the company's co-founder and CEO, Sam Cole.
"We are forced to cancel dozens of people from our Stockholm office, our server rooms are not affected," he says.
As recently as a month ago, we reported that the KNC has raised $25 million (in Swedish Krona, SEK) in venture capital. In total, the company has received $245 million (in Swedish Krona, SEK) since its inception. Among the investors include, among others, Creandum and Accel.
The company engaged in hand to mine bitcoin themselves but also deliver a cloud service like other miners can rent space on.
According to Sam Cole redundancies due partly to the company encountered unexpected competition and partly due to the expected reduction in energy tax in Sweden dragged on.
Worth noting here is that the Swedish government actually has proposed a reduction of the tax. The delay, however, 2017.
"It is mainly from China competition will. There were players who invested $200-300 million (in Swedish Krona, SEK) in equipment. It hit us hard, "said Sam Cole.
Why you hired more staff, even though you knew that the tax situation was unclear?
"With the competition that previously we had been able to tax remained. But now it has become much tougher competition, so the two things together meant that we had to do away with some of the staff. In the end, it's about mathematics, "he says.
Source: http://www.breakit.se/artikel/2692/ett- ... -knc-miner