Mining News in February, sponsored By Bitdeer

Title sponsored by Bitdeer, a NASDAQ-listed mining company.

Crypto miner Hut 8 has released its January 2024 operations update, holding 9,116 bitcoins on its balance sheet. Hut 8 has also signed a four-year agreement with Ionic Digital, which includes a possible fifth-year extension, and expects to ultimately add more than 12 EH/s of hashrate to its managed services business starting in February and 300 MW of infrastructure. Pre-construction of the 63 MW site in Culberson County, Texas, acquired by Hut 8, is underway.

Bitdeer mined 330 Bitcoins in total in January, an increase of 123.0% from the same period last year. Bitdeer expects to start land preparation for construction of their 221MW datacenter in Ohio, United States in February. This site will serve as a key component of their ongoing expansion initiatives, and is expected to be completed in 2025. Bitdeer also continued to advance the construction of their 175MW immersion cooling datacenter at Tydal mining facility in Norway, which is set to be completed by mid-2025. Bitdeer remains on schedule and expect to launch their SuperPOD-based high-performance cloud service platform during the first quarter of 2024.

Bitcoin mining company Marathon has released its January 2024 Bitcoin Mining Operations Report, reporting that 1,084 BTC were mined in January, a decrease of 42 percent from December, primarily due to weather and equipment failures that resulted in on-site outages. As of January 31, Marathon held 15,741 BTC, with a total cash and BTC value of $1 billion.

Marathon is set to pay a fee of $13.5 million to Hut 8 to end a service contract that originally had a term for four more years with a monthly charge of $1.17 million. It is termnating Hut 8’s role as the operator of two sites. These sites were recentlyacquired for $178 million in Granbury, Texas and Kearney, Nebraska, totaling 390 megawatts.

Bitdeer Mining Awards 2023：Avalon A1466/150T has been designated the Bitdeer Most Cost-Effective Miner of the Year for 2023; Foundry owns a total of 28.1% of the world’s hashing power, making it the largest mining pool；Whatsminer finalized a significant $380 million deal with Phoenix Group for green Bitcoin mining, distinguishing itself as the Mining Machine Order of the Year.

Texas bitcoin miner Riot has raised nearly $560 million over the past four months through stock offerings to fund its large purchases of MicroBT’s WhatsMiners. Riot announced in June and December to purchase MicroBT’s flagship WhatsMiner M56S and M66 series totaling 25.7 EH/s, worth about $453.4 million. Shipments began in the fourth quarter and are expected to be fully delivered and deployed by mid-2025.

On February 22nd HeatCore and Terahash brought bitcoin miners and water cooling systems to the German Bundestag for the first time. At the parliament, Terahash brought HeatCore’s HS20 water-cooled cabinet, as well as the Sleipnir miner, to speak on the topic of “Bitcoin as ESG Climate Technology and Energy Infrastructure: Economic and Ecological Opportunities for Germany”.

Bitmain released the latest ANTMINER KASPA miners, the KS5 Pro and KS5. The KS5 Pro hashrate is up to 21T with an energy efficiency ratio of 150 J/T, while the KS5 hashrate is up to 20T with an energy efficiency ratio of 150 J/T. The KASPA blockchain utilizes PoW (Proof of Work) as the consensus mechanism, BLOCKDAG structure and GHOSTDAG protocol. KASPA blockchain uses PoW (Proof of Work) as the consensus mechanism, BLOCKDAG structure and GHOSTDAG protocol.

The Texas Blockchain Council (TBC) and Riot Platforms sued the U.S. Department of Energy for demanding information without giving respondents sufficient notice. If the court does not intervene, the companies will be “immediately and irreparably harmed,” the filing said. The TBC and Riot also sued Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other officials.（CoinDesk）

10.

Hut 8 is set to make use of the 9,000 bitcoin on its balance sheet to fund its near-term growth, including a plan to build a new 63-megawatt (MW) site in Texas. Hut 8 claims that the estimated cost would be $275,000 per MW, implying a total capital expenditure of $17.3 million for the construction buildout. As of the end of January, Hut 8 was holding 9,116 BTC on its balance sheet, now worth about $515 million with bitcoin’s recent rally that has surged to new yearly highs of over $57,000. The company did not specify how it will utilize the bitcoin reserves exactly to fund the Culberson site buildout.

11.

Riot strengthens its self-mining operations by purchasing 31,500 WhatsMiner M60S miners from MicroBT with a combined total of 5.9 EH/s purchased for $97.4 million, equating to approximately $16.50/TH. Miner deliveries are scheduled to occur in May 2024 and June 2024. The M60S miners purchased are MicroBT’s latest generation air-cooled machines featuring an efficiency rating of 18.5 J/TH and produce approximately 186 TH/s per machine.

12.

Cryptocurrency mining company Core Scientific tweeted that it produced 19,274 bitcoins in 2023, with 13,762 BTC self-mined in its data centers and 5,512 BTC mined by customers, making it the largest publicly-listed bitcoin producer in North America.

13.

Canaan announced unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2023. According to the results, Canaan’s fourth quarter total revenue of $49.1 million was significantly higher than the $34.0 million revenue estimate and up 47% from the third quarter of 2023, and total sales arithmetic for the quarter was 5.5 million TH/s, an increase of 191.9% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022 and up 45.7% from the third quarter of 2023.For the full year of 2023, key Financials: Total computing power sold: 19.6 million TH/s, up 29.6% from 15.1 million TH/s in 2022; Revenue: $211.5 million, down from $651.5 million in 2022; Mining revenue: $34.0 million, up from $32.5 million in 2022.

14.

Marathon Digital Holdings reported its financial and operational results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2023. Bitcoin production increased 210% to a record 12,852 BTC in 2023 from 4,144 BTC in 2022. Revenues increased 229% to a record $387.5 million in 2023 from $117.8 million in 2022. Net income improved to a record $261.2 million, or $1.06 per diluted share, from a net loss of $694 million, or $(6.12) per diluted share, in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA improved to a record $419.9 million in 2023 from a loss of $543.4 million in 2022. Combined unrestricted cash and cash equivalents and bitcoin increased to $997.0 million as of December 31, 2023.

15.

The number of bitcoin (BTC) held by crypto miners has dropped to the lowest level. Data tracked by Glassnode shows the estimated number of BTC held in wallets tied to miners fell by 8,426 BTC ($530 million) since the start of the year to 1,812,482 BTC. To improve profitability, miners may be using their stored BTC to buy more efficient equipment so that running costs drop.（CoinDesk）

16.

Riot Platforms reports full year 2023 financial results. Riot reports record results, with $280.7 million in total revenue, 6,626 Bitcoin produced, and record hashrate capacity of 12.4 EH/s. At the end of 2023, Riot Platforms had approximately $597 million in cash and 7,362 Bitcoin.

17.

Bitcoin mining difficulty was adjusted on March 1 at block height 832,608, and this time the mining difficulty was adjusted downward by 2.9% to 79.35 T, with an average hashrate of 608.59 EH/s and an average block time of 9 minutes and 20 seconds.

18.

Canadian bitcoin mining firm DMG Blockchain has secured a $9 million credit facility with Swiss crypto-friendly Sygnum Bank. The loan proceeds will be used to fund the purchase of 4,550 units of Bitmain’s Antminer T21 totaling $12.1 million. The first tranche of $5.6 million has already been disbursed to meet part of its payment obligation to Bitmain. DMG has been mining between 50 to 100 BTC every month for the past year while steadily increasing its bitcoin reserves. As of Jan. 31, the company had 468 BTC on its balance sheet, worth $24.3 million at the moment.

19.

State-owned Ethiopian Investment Holdings has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Data Center Service, a subsidiary of Hong Kong’s West Data Group. Ethiopia and West Data will cooperate on a $250-million project “dedicated to establishing cutting-edge infrastructure for data mining and artificial intelligence training operations in Ethiopia.”（Cointelegraph）

20.

Proprietary trading firm Jane Street has increased the ownership of Marathon, now representing 6.5% of the outstanding shares of the largest public bitcoin mining firm. A new Schedule 13G filing of Marathon on Friday shows that Jane Street owned 14.4 million shares of Marathon as of Dec. 31, which is worth $334 million based on Marathon’s latest closing price. Meanwhile, Bit Digital filed an update on Friday that shows BlackRock’s asset management and investment management subsidiaries increased the ownership of Bit Digital to 7.4 million shares as of Dec. 31. That represented 8.2% of Bit Digital’s outstanding shares.

21.

Ethiopia is becoming one of the most popular destinations for Chinese miners. Mining services provider Luxor Technology estimates that Ethiopia has become one of the world’s largest recipients of bitcoin miners.Luxor Technology says it has power supply agreements with 21 bitcoin miners, all but two of which are Chinese. Ethiopia allows bitcoin mining from 2022, it still bans cryptocurrency trading. The Ethiopian government, which allows bitcoin mining mainly because the companies pay for the electricity they consume in foreign currency, has passed a directive to regulate “crypto products,” including mining.

22.

Hut 8 Corp. named Asher Genoot to succeed Jaime Leverton as chief executive officer, three weeks after a short-seller released a report critical of its recent merger. Genoot served as the chief operating officer and the president of US Bitcoin Corp. Miami-based US Bitcoin, which has large-scale mining facilities across the US including Texas, completed its merger with then-Canadian miner Hut 8 in late 2023.

23.

Bitmain-affiliated bitcoin mining firm BitFuFu is making progress on the merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to go public in the U.S. The company filed an F-4 with the SEC on Dec. 31 to register its securities for the SPAC merger transaction as a foreign private entity. On Wednesday, the filing was declared effective by the SEC. The F-4 form being declared effective by the SEC is a key step for BitFuFu to consummate the merger transaction and subsequent listing. BitFuFu mined 2,253 BTC and had 15.2 EH/s of operating hashrate as of June 30 but nearly 80% of the hashing power came from miners leased from Bitmain. Bitmain owns 5% of BitFuFu’s equity and is a material supplier that BitFuFu relies on since nearly $90 million of BitFuFu’s revenue during the first half of 2023 went to Bitmain as a cost of revenue associated with the miner leasing and hosting fees.