What happened
Shares of Ebang International (EBON -4.20%) rose as much as 20.9% on Thursday morning, despite a relatively quiet day for cryptocurrencies and related stocks. The crypto-mining hardware builder achieved this rare feat by announcing an interesting new line of business.
So what
On an unusually stable day for this volatile industry, where Bitcoin (BTC 2.88%) shares were trading just 2% higher and Ethereum (ETH 1.43%) was down by 2%, Ebang posted a large gain by announcing a brand new business idea. The company will soon start to mine Litecoin (LTC 1.11%) and Dogecoin (DOGE 3.37%) tokens, using a combination of its own mining hardware and computing power purchased from outside sources.
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
This announcement followed on last week's decision to start mining Bitcoin tokens in a similar fashion. The mining machine specialist is putting some skin in the game here, and the mining operations may also help the company reach a deeper understanding of hardware design improvements that could boost the raw performance and bang-for-your-buck of Ebang's mining chips.
The specific cryptocurrency choices also make a great deal of sense. Litecoin started as a hard fork from Bitcoin in 2011. Dogecoin, in turn, forked off of Litecoin's code base two years later. The three digital currencies in Ebang's mining plans all use similar mining technologies.
