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Alexander Sazonov
Val Vavilov was an early cryptocurrency adopter who built Bitfury over 15 years into one of the biggest players in the industry by designing hardware to mine bitcoin.
In recent years the Latvian billionaire, 46, has steered his empire towards data centres for artificial intelligence. Now, the latest crypto meltdown is a chance to buy again, he said.
“For us, the fall in bitcoin is an opportunity to rebalance our portfolio and purchase a certain amount of bitcoin at a low price,” he said in comments on WhatsApp, without disclosing the invested amount or how much he’s been buying.
Last week’s crypto market meltdown dragged the token down more than 50 per cent from its October peak, burning retail investors and rattling even long-time bulls. Michael Burry, who rose to prominence for his wager against the US housing market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, warned last week that Bitcoin’s plunge could deepen into a self-reinforcing “death spiral.” Bitcoin slid below $US67,000 ($93,860) during Asian trading hours on Wednesday, falling to its lowest level since last Friday’s selloff, even though some data suggests that crypto whales are buying again.
It’s become commonplace for crypto’s elite to stay bullish during bad routs. Michael Saylor’s Strategy bought over $US7 billion worth of Bitcoin since the October 10 crash, according to data from its website. He’s also been encouraging others to buy.
Vavilov is taking a more nuanced view.
“We believe in Bitcoin and its growth, and we hold some of our assets in Bitcoin, but it is only one component of our investment portfolio,” he said, saying his company has long diversified into AI and other areas.
Bitcoin’s volatile start to 2026 saw the world’s largest cryptocurrency tumble at one point to its lowest level in over a year, wiping out the gains it had made since US President Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office.
Vavilov is a co-founder of privately held Bitfury, a technology and hardware provider for cryptocurrency mining. He also owns a 12 per cent stake in Cipher Mining, a Nasdaq-listed company spun out of Bitfury in 2021, whose shares have surged about 200 per cent over the last year.
The company’s stock surge came on the heels of a $US3 billion, 10-year deal with Fluidstack, a cloud firm partly backed by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, underscoring a push beyond cryptocurrency mining into infrastructure supporting the growing AI industry.
That diversification has allowed Vavilov to ride out the worst of the latest rout. He’s worth $US1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Born in what was then Soviet Latvia, Vavilov began programming while still in school. He co-founded Bitfury in 2011 with self-taught microchip engineer Valery Nebesny, who later left Bitfury to pursue his own projects.
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