Student by Day, Crypto Miner by Night: NYU Undergrad’s $6 Million Empire
Jerry Yu is a 23-year-old student at New York University. He’s also the majority owner of a Bitcoin (BTC) mining farm in the US, fighting legal battles and various allegations.
Yu, a Chinese national and US resident, is what the Chinese call second-generation rich, The New York Times reported. The authors described him as,
“A case study in how Chinese nationals can move money from China to the United States without drawing the attention of authorities in either country.”
The student lives in Manhattan in an $8 million condominium.
Outside the university, Yu is the majority owner of BitRush Inc., aka BytesRush.
The mine was acquired last year for more than $6 million. It is located on an open field next to an electrical substation in a small Texas town called Channing, with less than 300 residents.
The facility features “several dozen” buildings that hold the equipment. To be precise, they house 6,000 miners operating non-stop.
The mining facility wasn’t bought with dollars, but with crypto. Regulators tend to find issues with this type of anonymity as they have trouble tracing funds.
The Times noted that it enables Chinese investors to avoid the US banking system and federal regulators. At the same time, they can evade Chinese restrictions on taking money out of the country.
Furthermore, China has enacted a full ban on crypto back in 2021. This has led investors and miners to move to the US. This further resulted in security questions related to Chinese ownership and investors, as discussed below.
The facility purchase got into focus following a number of lawsuits filed by contractors, claiming they were not fully paid.
Panhandle Line Service is an electrical contractor involved in a suit and countersuit with BitRush over
Read more on cryptonews.com
