BTC Mining

Bitfarms Partners With Foundry, Joins US Mining Pool, Fleet Expands by 2,465 Bitcoin Miners

24/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

On April 23, the publicly listed mining operation Bitfarms revealed a partnership with the Digital Currency Group (DCG) subsidiary Foundry Digital LLC. Bitfarms will be joining Foundry’s American mining pool and the two bitcoin mining firms have revealed the joint purchase of 2,465 Whatsminer M30S ASIC mining machines.

Bitfarms Partners With Foundry’s US Operations

At the end of March, the mining company Hut 8 explained that the bitcoin mining operation was joining Foundry’s U.S. mining pool. At the time, Hut 8’s CEO Jaime Leverton explained that “having a formidable bitcoin mining pool based and operated entirely in North America is important.”

Now another mining operation has announced a partnership with the DCG-owned Foundry as Bitfarms (TSXV:BITF) explained on Friday it was joining the company’s U.S. operations. The two companies disclosed the joint purchase of 2,465 machines and 1,465 were previously installed in Bitfarms’ Sherbrooke facility for hosting purposes.

The company ended the hosting agreement and “returned 100%,” while the mining rigs added 133 petahash per second to the firm’s operational capacity. Bitfarm’s announcement notes there’s a semiconductor shortage worldwide and ASIC mining rig purchases need 50% to 100% deposit.

Adding 90 Petahash: Bitfarms Plans to Finance Another 1,000 Bitcoin Mining Rigs

Foundry’s efforts aim to make things more convenient for U.S. bitcoin miners operating facilities. The DCG subsidiary claims it has “helped procure nearly half of the Bitcoin mining machines installed in North America in 2020.”

With the latest procurement of mining rigs Bitfarms believes it can recover its deposit in less than a month and from there profit for a few years later. The company plans to obtain financing in order to purchase another batch of 1,000 Whatsminer M30S bitcoin miners.

The additional 1,000 Microbt Whatsminers will provide roughly 90 PH/s to the company’s mining operations.

Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry says that helping forward this technology is what the DCG company was meant to do. Foundry provides “equipment financing and a mining pool that has been designed to help publicly traded companies such as Bitfarms scale their operations locally and in a fully compliant manner,” Colyer said during the partnership announcement.

What do you think about Bitfarms and Foundry’s partnership and the acquisition of 2,465 ASIC mining machines? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

2 Cents per Kilowatt Hour: Bitfarms to Launch a 210 MW Bitcoin Mining Operation in Argentina

21/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

The Canadian publicly traded bitcoin mining company Bitfarms has announced a deal that will see the company developing a 210 megawatt (MW) mining farm in Argentina. Bitfarms says that the company was able to secure a low electricity rate at $0.02 per kWh during the contractual period.

Argentine-Based Bitcoin Mining Facility Aims to Acquire 210 MW of Power

The company Bitfarms (TSXV:BITF, OTC:BFARF) has announced the firm is expanding to South America, as it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding in order to build a 210 MW bitcoin mining facility.

Bitfarms says the purchase agreement started back in October 2020 and initially the farm would be around 60 MW. However, since then the agreement has been “significantly enhanced,” as the power purchase agreement with a utility-grade private power producer in Argentina will allow the firm to “draw up to 210 MW of electricity at its discretion.”

Bitfarms also details that the warmer climate in Argentina helps the company mine bitcoin without depending on costly liquid immersion cooling techniques. The company also says that the firm will relocate a number of bitcoin miners to the Argentinean facility. During the first week of March, Bitfarms announced the acquisition of 48,000 next-generation bitcoin miners.

“Bitfarms plans to relocate a substantial number of its older miners to the new data centre. While the older miners are less efficient than the new miners, the low cost of electrical power and the proven reliability of these miners will extend their economic life,” the company’s announcement details. “This strategy will allow our older miners to continue to be accretive to cash flow from operations and to contribute to Bitfarms’ overall corporate hashrate.”

Bitfarms Finds Break-Even Costs in Argentina Is 45% Cheaper Than Québec

Further, the company did a comparison to find out the break-even cost to mine BTC in Québec in contrast to mining in Argentina. The company estimates that the Argentinean facility would give the firm a “45% savings.”

Mining bitcoin in South America with 210 MW of low-cost power will help the company achieve an 8 exahash per second (EH/s) target for Q4 2022. “It is also intended to provide geographic production diversification to reduce risk and serve as an effective hedge for Bitfarms against the next halving event in 2024,” Bitfarms’ announcement emphasized.

The company already has operations in Cowansville, Farnham, Magog, Saint-Hyacinthe, and Sherbrooke, Québec. Bitfarms plans to expand Sherbrooke operations 1&2 to an additional four expansions, Cowansville will see a second, Saint-Hyacinthe will see another, and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, a city in eastern Montérégie will see a 5 MW facility.

What do you think about Bitfarms setting up a 210 MW bitcoin mining operation in Argentina? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Bitcoin Hashrate Drops Over 45%, Xinjiang Grid Blackouts Blamed, BTC Price Slides 10%

18/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

Since April 15, the Bitcoin network hashrate has dropped more than 49% after touching an all-time high at 218 exahash per second. Regional reports noted that in China the Xinjiang grid is having blackouts and “safety inspections.”

Reports Claim Blackouts in Xinjiang, China Have Pushed Bitcoin’s Hashrate Down 49%

At the time of writing, the Bitcoin (BTC) network hashrate has seen a 49% drop off after touching an all-time high (ATH). Data shows on April 15, BTC’s hashrate climbed to a massive 218 exahash per second (EH/s).

Almost immediately after that point, the network hashrate started to spiral downwards. When the hashrate started dropping the regional reporter Colin Wu (@wublockchain) tweeted about electrical grid blackouts in China.

“The hashrate of bitcoin mining pools plummeted in 24 hours. Antpool fell by 24.5%, Btc.com fell by 18.9%, Poolin fell by 33%, Binance pool fell by 20%,” Wu tweeted. “The reason is that Northwest China is undergoing a complete blackout for safety inspections.”

The founding partner at Primitive Crypto, Dovey Wan also spoke about outages the next day. “Xinjiang is facing a major power outage due to a coal mine explosion,” Wan remarked. “Bitcoin hashrate drops almost 30% instantly… Expected to recover in a week or so. All data centers were shut as well,” she added.

Wan continued:

Xinjiang [and] Sichuan combined together have well over 50% of the overall [Bitcoin] hashrate. Hope [we] can have more distributed hashrate in the future for resilience purposes.

Next Week’s Data Could Show an Estimate of Xinjiang’s Hashrate Share

The cofounder of blockchain data aggregator Coinmetrics.io, Nic Carter also tweeted about the situation in China and the hashrate drop.

“The Xinjiang grid going down and its effects on bitcoin hashrate are what economists call a ‘natural experiment.’ [A] very helpful source of data. Xinjiang is heavily coal-based but not exclusively so. There’s huge amounts of wind and solar – 35% renewable as of 2019. [Third] highest renewable share of all Chinese provinces (behind Gansu and Ningxia) (hydro ≠ renewable for purposes of this data).

Carter added that next week, the drop could show just how much hashrate resides in the region. He said:

Based on what the next week’s worth of data tells us, we will be able to devise an estimate of Xinjiang share of [the] BTC network (assuming we know for sure that the entire grid is down – hard to tell based on scant reports).

Meanwhile, a great number of people have said that the price dump is correlated with the hashrate plunge. The director of research at The Block Crypto, Larry Cermak disagrees the blame can be cast so easily on the loss of hashpower. “LOL, if you think the hashrate drop was the reason for the dump you’re ngmi,” Cermak said in response to Willy Woo’s tweet (pictured above).

“For those looking for some explanation, corrections are natural after massive run-ups. Weekends with low liquidity are perfect, some dumb catalyst to spook traders off, and down we go. Markets were bid up for Coinbase and that ended up disappointing as well. Not surprising,” Cermak added.

Network Fees Spike and Price Starts to Follow Hashrate on Sunday Evening

The conversation surrounding BTC’s hashrate has been a trending topic on social media and forums. The cofounder and CBO at Compass Mining, Thomas Heller, also shared a source of the accident in the coal mine as well.

“Mining farms in Xinjiang closed this morning for inspections – network hashrate from most Chinese mining pools have a significant drop,” Heller wrote. “It’s related to the accident in the Xinjiang coal mine earlier in the week,” he added.

On Saturday at 11:00 p.m. (EST), bitcoin’s price dropped to a low of $51,541 but has regained some losses during Sunday’s early morning trading sessions. At the time of publication, at 7:30 a.m. (EST), bitcoin (BTC) is down 10% and exchanging hands for $54,848 per unit. The entire crypto-economy shed more than 8% since 11:00 p.m. last night.

What do you think about the Bitcoin hashrate plummeting over 49% this weekend? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Bitriver to Sell Tokens Backed by 100 Megawatts of Low-Carbon Siberian Mining Power

13/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

On April 12, the international provider of colocation services for low-carbon cryptocurrency mining Bitriver announced it is launching a pre-sale of tokens backed by 100 megawatts (MW) of mining power in Siberia. The ERC20 tokens called “bitriver token (BTR)” will represent a single watt-hour (Wh) of Bitriver’s power in Bratsk.

A Low-Carbon Crypto Mining Token

The blockchain and mining firm Bitriver announced the organization is launching the public sale for its new tokens called “bitriver token (BTR)” on April 19, 2021. Each token represents a single watt-hour (Wh) of Bitriver’s low-carbon cryptocurrency mining power and the tokens will have utility as well.

According to the company’s announcement, the tokens will be able to be used to pay for Bitriver’s colocation services and “will be bought back by Bitriver at original listing price after a five-year period.” Right now BTR is available to pre-sale investors with a minimum order quantity of 100,000 BTR tokens per order.

As far as the public launch is concerned next Monday, the BTR tokens will be sold on Bithumb Global and the price per BTR will start at $0.3504 per unit. The announcement says BTR will be paired with BTC, USDT, and USDC. A supply of 100 million BTR has been issued in order to represent the 100 MW of power.

“From day one, we have always sought to use only renewable and surplus energy for all our operations. It is encouraging to see the increasing interest worldwide in low-carbon cryptocurrency mining,” Igor Runets, the founder and CEO of Bitriver said. “By launching the BTR token, we seek to accelerate our efforts to make cryptocurrency mining greener while offering investors around the world an easier-than-ever way to become part of environment-friendly cryptocurrency mining today.”

Bitriver Hopes to Capture 1,000 Megawatts of Power by 2022

BTR token holders will be incentivized by being able to “get additional tokens every month” and use BTR to pay up to 10% of the monthly collocation service bills. Bitriver says it will accept BTR based on the average market price on the exchange for the last settlement month.

“Obtain free of charge repair service of mining equipment that is located in the Bitriver’s mining datacenter each particular month,” the company says. “If the holder pays 10% of this monthly bill by tokens,” Bitriver’s announcement adds.

In Bratsk the Siberian region of Russia where Bitriver’s managed data centers are located the area has around 5 GW of renewable hydropower. By the end of 2021, Bitriver hopes to capture 300 MW of power and 1,000 MW by the end of 2022.

What do you think about Bitriver’s BTR token backed by mining power in Siberia? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Online Game Operator The9 Plans to Purchase 2,000 Bitcoin Miners for Over $6 Million

10/04/2021 by Idelto Editor

The Shanghai-based online game operator, The9 Limited, has revealed the company is planning to acquire 2,000 Canaan Avalonminers for over $6 million in a stock deal. The9’s binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) explains that the new units will give the company 0.1 exahash of bitcoin hashpower.

On April 9, the publicly-listed gaming and internet company The9 Limited (Nasdaq: NCTY) revealed the firm’s intentions to acquire 2,000 bitcoin (BTC) miners. The new miners will give the company a total hashrate of approximately 100 PH/s or 0.1 exahash (EH/s) of processing power.

According to the announcement, The9 entered into a legally binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with an “unrelated bitcoin mining machine owner.” The machines will be exchanged for Class A ordinary shares.

The9 said that the firm will issue approximately 8,127,390 shares based on the share price of around $24.81. But during the next six months, the number of shares could be reassessed.

But the new MOU is not the only deal The9 has established. The company also disclosed that it obtained 0.288 (EH/s) of hashpower. This deal took place when the company signed definitive agreements for 12,246 bitcoin mining rigs.

The announcement does not disclose whether or not the 12,246 mining rigs are Canaan Avalonminer brand miners. That specific deal was also completed with share calculations and an issuance agreement with a lock-up period of six months.

The9 is a very well known gaming and internet firm and for a very long time, The9 had an exclusive license to operate and distribute the extremely popular game World of Warcraft in China.

What do you think about The9 purchasing 2,000 Avalonminers from an unknown source? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.