Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms is purchasing 66,560 Bitcoin mining rigs from manufacturer MicroBT, one of the largest hash rate orders in the company’s history, ahead of the Bitcoin halving scheduled for April 2024.
Riot said in a statement on December 4 that the total value of the additional purchase agreements is $290.5 million. That means they paid an average of $4,360 for each machine.
$Riot Exercise your purchase option for MicroBT’s latest generation submerged miner 18EH/s and secure additional purchase options providing a path to exceed 100EH/s.
– Riot is ordering the latest generation of MicroBT Bitcoin Miners 18 EH/s, mainly consisting of: pic.twitter.com/tEEudV6Z8n
— Riot Platforms (@RiotPlatforms) December 4, 2023
The right-to-purchase option was included in Riot’s initial agreement with MicroBT last June when it agreed to purchase 33,280 machines from MicroBT. The two companies have now updated this agreement, giving Riot the option to purchase up to 265,000 additional miners from MicroBT on the same terms as the new order.
Riot CEO Jason Les said the purchase order was the “largest order in hash rate” in the company’s history and that he hoped the updated contract would further strengthen Riot’s mining performance.
Over 48,000, or 72%, of the new machines will be MicroBT’s latest model, the M66S, which has a hash rate of 250 terahashes per second (TH/s), with the remaining machines comprised of the M66 (14,770) and M56S++ (3,720). . ) model, Riot noted.
In total, 66,560 miners will add 18 exahashes per second (EH/s) to Riot’s operations.
Riot said the first 33,280 miners purchased in June will begin deploying in the first quarter of 2024, while the newest 66,560 miners will be deployed in the second half of 2024.
The company expects its own mining hash rate capacity to reach 38EH/s once its 99,840 rigs are fully installed and operational, which is first expected in the second half of 2025.
The company previously cited the upcoming Bitcoin halving event, scheduled for April 2024, as one of the key reasons for its recent buying.
Shares of Riot (RIOT) rose nearly 9% on December 4, according to Google Finance. It has risen more than 345% so far in 2023.
Bitcoin miners increase production. Hut 8 Corp begins trading
Bitcoin miner CleanSpark produced 666 BTC in November, up 5.2% from the 633 BTC it produced in October and up 24% from November 2022.
Zach Bradford, the company’s CEO, said increased interest in Ordinals has led to a “significant increase” in commission-driven production.
“These trends suggest that fees could soon become a larger source of revenue as Bitcoin’s use cases grow and adoption increases,” Bradford added.
November, $CLSK Second highest monthly achievement #Bitcoin Despite increasing difficulty, you produce more energy without using it.
*Monthly production: 666 units (24% increase compared to the same period last year)
*gun #BTC Holds: 2,575
*Fleet at the end of the month #efficiency: 26.4J/TH
*every day… pic.twitter.com/i65AY2pskk— CleanSpark Inc. (@CleanSpark_Inc) December 1, 2023
Meanwhile, Nasdaq-listed TeraWulf said it mined 323 BTC in November, a 3% increase over its October production. The company said most of this was driven by higher network transaction fees, but did not mention the impact of Ordinals.
Related: Marathon, Riot Among the Most Overrated Bitcoin Mining Stocks: Report
Hut 8 completed its merger with US-based mining company Bitcoin Corp on November 30 to form Hut 8 Corp, which has been trading on NASDAQ and the Toronto Stock Exchange (ticker: HUT) since December 4. started.
However, according to Google Finance, the merged company’s debut on the exchange showed a sluggish performance, with drops of 11.75% and 7.44% on the day.
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