With the tough conditions that faced Bitcoin miners last year, Iris’ co-founder said the purchase was a “significant milestone” for the company.
Bitcoin from Australia BTC ($21,855) Mining Company Iris Energy has revealed that it will almost triple the installation of thousands of mining machines.
On Feb. 13, the company said it purchased an additional 4.4 exahashes per second (EH / s) of Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro ASIC miners, bringing its own capacity to 5.5 EH / s from 2.0 EH / s.
Based on the S19j Pro’s maximum hash rate of 100 terahashes per second (TH/s), the purchase adds about 44,000 miners to its fleet, according to Cointelegraph calculations. Daniel Roberts, founder and CEO of Iris, said the purchase “is an important step” for the company, adding that it is “a difficult time for the company and the market in general”.
Iris said the new miners will be installed at the company’s headquarters but did not specify where. The company operates three locations in British Columbia, Canada, and one in Texas, USA. The company used $67 million of the remaining payments to ASIC miner Bitmain to pay for the purchase of the rigs “without additional funds.”
Iris has a 10 EH/s contract with Bitmain which he says is “done well, with no guarantees left.” He said he would not pay.
The company said that it is also considering the option of selling miners more than 5.5 PE / s of investment rights to reinvest the money. Last November, the company was forced to terminate the miners’ contracts with a $107.8 million loan because the units were generating “insufficient funds to meet their debt service obligations.”
Over the past few months, cryptocurrency miners have been under pressure from multiple sources, having to contend with low Bitcoin prices amid high hash rates, difficulties higher, and higher energy costs.
The pressure caused publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies to sell almost all of the BTC mined throughout 2022, and data from the blockchain research company Messari shows that Iris sold around 100% of almost 2 500 BTC it mined that year.
The February analysis of the Hashrate Index shows that publicly traded miners increased production in January with better weather conditions and stable electricity prices helping to boost production. Iris production in January made 172 BTC, compared to 123 BTC in December.
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