
Sydney-based bitcoin miner Iris Energy, with sites in British Columbia, Canada, is investing additional capital to improve its contribution to the global bitcoin hash rate.
The mining company is investing in new equipment to take its hash rate (a measure of mining power, the higher the means more powerful) from 3.7 EH/s by the end of Q4, 2022 to 4.3 EH/s by the end of Q4, 2022 . The company is increasing the capacity of its Mackenzie, British Columbia plant from 50 MW to 80 MW to ensure it meets its target of 4.3 EH/s by the end of this year.
Beyond this target, the company will delay further expansion in view of the current market conditions.
Since the company began mining bitcoin in 2019, it applied for an initial public offering in October last year. Mining is the process of validating transaction blocks on a blockchain by solving complex mathematical puzzles using specially designed computers (ASICs). Most large miners today run server farms with sophisticated cooling systems filled with ASICs.
BTC liquidation is becoming the hallmark of a bear market
Unlike US competitors Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital Holdings, Iris Energy typically liquidates newly minted bitcoins, which traditionally hold coins. But current market conditions have also forced giants like Riot and Texas-based Core Scientific to rethink their hawking strategy. According to Bloomberg, Core Scientific recently sold 2598 coins, while Riot sold 250. Iris Energy’s Canadian neighbor Bitfarms also recently announced its withdrawal from its hodling strategy, opting to sell 3000 bitcoins for about $62 million to inject liquidity into the company and pay for it. loan of.
small miners can be bought
As larger miners bring more computing power online, the bitcoin algorithm increases the difficulty of mining new bitcoins to prevent the concentration of mining power in the hands of a few. According to Blockchain.com, mining revenue from newly minted coins and transaction fees recorded a yearly low of $14.4 million as of June 16.
These factors, along with fluctuating energy costs, could spell doom for mining companies such as Xive, which opted to shut down some operations as bitcoin fell below $25,000. The total hashing power started to drop on 12 June. As bitcoin began its six-day slide, smaller mining organizations surrendered and went offline.
This is a challenging time in the mining business, says Alexander Neumueller of the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance.
But companies such as Iris Energy and Marathon, the latter of which invested $200 million to expand their operations in the first quarter of 2022, have set a greater tolerance for energy costs and demanding markets.
There’s also a degree of foresight and planning that helps more major companies weather the current storm, said Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut8, another Canadian organization. Hut8 has accumulated a battle chest of 7,078 bitcoins, which it can use to fund an acquisition that Argo Blockchain CEO believes could happen within a year.
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