With the tough conditions that faced Bitcoin miners last year, Iris’ co-founder said the purchase was a “significant milestone” for the company.
Iris Energy to nearly triple hash rate with estimated 44,000 new BTC miners
Bitcoin ASIC miner prices hovering at lows not seen in years
ASIC miners’ price per terahash has fallen more than 80% from its peak in 2021 as Bitcoin mining machines continue to flood the marketplace.
Green Mining Company HIVE Secures Deal To Buy A Number Of Intel’s New ASICs
The ESG-focused mining company HIVE is the latest organization to sign a deal with Intel. It joins Block, Argo Blockchain, and GRIID, as the first clients and testers of the giant’s new ASICs. Intel’s Bonanza Mine project is quickly becoming one of bitcoin’s stories of the year. It’s funny that, so far, no one has seen the equipment. The idea of a bitcoin miner made in the US is appealing, though. Plus, the project’s rollout has been masterful so far.
The headline here is that “HIVE owns state-of-the-art, green energy-powered data centre facilities in Canada, Sweden, and Iceland, where we source only green energy to mine.” In a recent press release, the company announced the Intel deal and its intention to expand into the US. “The Company is planning for a 100 MW deployment at one of Compute North’s renewable energy campuses in Texas.”
HIVE self-proclaimed itself “the first cryptocurrency mining company with a green energy and ESG strategy”. The company’s other significant characteristic is that they’re holders. “Since the beginning of 2021, HIVE has held in secure storage the majority of its ETH and BTC coin mining rewards.” That goes in line with new data that shows that miners are quietly accumulating bitcoin as the market bleeds.
BTC price chart for 03/08/2022 on Capital.com | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
What Do We Know About HIVE ‘s Deal With Intel?
Not much, really. “HIVE has entered into a Supply Agreement with Intel which is one of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers, for their upcoming blockchain accelerator.” Notice how HIVE calls the ASICs “blockchain accelerators,” just as Intel did in the company’s blog. Will the name catch on?
The press release doesn’t specify how many bitcoin miners will HIVE buy, but, it provides some relevant data:
“These miners are expected to be delivered over a period of one year starting in the second half of calendar 2022, the effect of which, if they are all installed, would be an expected increase of up to 95% in our aggregate Bitcoin mining hashrate from 1.9 Exahash per second.”
It also quotes HIVE ‘s president, Aydin Kilic, who about the deal said:
“After months of careful planning, we are very excited to take this step forward with a global technology leader like Intel. HIVE is committed to implementing these next-generation blockchain accelerators in its green energy infrastructure.”
The ESG aspect of the whole endeavor is another important point here.
Bitcoin Keeps Going Greener And Greener
Recently, GRIID’s filling with the SEC revealed several characteristics of Intel’s new bitcoin miners. As always, NewsBTC got you the 411:
“When the world first heard about Intel’s ASIC ambitions, the company cleverly described the machines as “ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient.” How efficient will they actually be? Tom’s hardware answers:
“According to the listing, BMZ2’s performance weighs in at 135 TH/s with 26 J/THs of efficiency. Additionally, the miner is roughly half the cost of a competing Bitmain S19 Pro while being 15% more efficient, rivaling the best hardware on the market from competing companies.”
Would 15% really make that much of a difference? If it can rival the S19 Pro, it would. And Intel wouldn’t make this much noise if they didn’t have a winner in their hands, would they? Maybe HIVE ‘s president, Aydin Kilic, can shed some light on that:
“Intel’s energy-efficient and high performance blockchain accelerator is expected to reduce our power consumption over current ASIC miners on the market. HIVE will participate in the system development process from design verification, through to the prototype stages, and then factory & test engineering regimens to arrive at a production model; we are well-positioned and excited to undertake the process ahead.”
That’s right, the first few clients will help with the testing and development of Intel’s final product. That makes all the sense in the world. Let’s wish them luck, because an ASIC miner made in the US would certainly help break Bitmain’s quasi-monopoly. The bitcoin ecosystem needs more decentralization in that aspect.
Featured Image: HIVE’s logo, screenshot from this video | Charts by TradingView
Bitcoin Mining Museum Opens Its Doors In Venezuela. Is It The First-Ever?
The Caribbean nation of Venezuela keeps registering firsts on the book. They have arguably the first-ever CBDC, the infamous Petro, and now this. The first-ever Bitcoin Mining Museum. And even though Bitcoin is barely 12 years old, the idea makes sense. Everything has been moving too fast in that arena, someone needs to register it and preserve the past.
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Since January 17th, the space is open for business. The Bitcoin Mining Museum is located at Chacao’s Torre Xerox, in Caracas. CriptoAvila, a mining equipment dealer, is both creator and operator. Joan Telo, a representative from the company, told CriptoNoticias:
“We decided to take this step because, until now, there is no, or at least not publicly, place where people can observe evolution and we felt it was necessary. Each equipment, each brand, and model that we will exhibit has a story to tell, either because they have been transcendental in the history of mining or because they represented obstacles. Within this story, there are also scams, equipment that ended up harming many people who tried to mine bitcoin at the time.”
BTC price chart on Bitstamp | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
A Bitcoin Mining Museum That Teaches
The museum will also host a model mine, with which visitors will be able to learn how the whole process works, and, “build safe electrical installations to connect your own ASICs.” Among the exhibited pieces, there’s an ATI 5850 AMD graphic card. About this one, Telo said:
“It was one of the best GPUs, but just when people began to use them, there was a worldwide stock failure like the one we are experiencing now. It happened precisely because of the cards’ capacity for mining. It was the first time that there was a global inventory failure caused by bitcoin mining. Now, our idea is to add equipment to the museum as we get them, because we want to be a world reference on this issue of the evolutionary process of cryptocurrency mining.”
To close the article off, Criptonoticias gives us interesting stats about Bitcoin mining in Venezuela:
Venezuela, even since last year, is among the 10 countries with the greatest presence in Bitcoin mining. At that time, the Caribbean country registered 0.42% of the total hash rate, although occasionally that figure has been higher.
Not Everything Is Rosy For Bitcoin-Miners In Venezuela
In other news, on July 15th Venezuelan police detained six people in Puerto Ordaz for operating an unregistered mine. They had 25 unlicensed ASIC miners that were seized. However, the non-gubernamental organization Asociación Nacional de Criptomonedas or ASONACRIP, informs us that the miners are free once again. According to Criptonoticias:
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Through a statement, ASONACRIP celebrated the action of the state entity to achieve the release of the miners. In this regard, the organization stressed that digital mining activity is legal in Venezuela and operating miners without a license represents an offense punishable by fines, but not a crime. In other words, the miners cannot be detained.
So, yeah, the regulation of Bitcoin mining through strict registration isn’t going that well in Venezuela. At least they’re trying new things and breaking eggs. And they have the first-ever Bitcoin Mining Museum.
Featured Image by Shutterstock | Charts by TradingView
Marathon Digital Holdings Reported A 17% Spike In Bitcoin Mining
The Bitcoin mining company, Marathon Digital Holdings recently revealed that the company mined a whopping 265.6 Bitcoins in June alone.
This number of BTC in June alone exceeds what the company had in May by 17%. The total amount for the whole quarter 2 sits at 654.3 Bitcoins.
From the first month of the year to the third month in 2021, the company could produce only 191.7 Bitcoins. However, in the second quarter, the number exceeded the first quarter’s production more than 3 times.
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A brief study of its monthly production since the year started shows that the company produced 50.4 BTC in January. In February, the number decreased to 43.4 BTC. March saw a rise of BTC production to 97.9, concluding the first-quarter figure.
In the second quarter, April production was a total of 162.1 BTC, which was a considerable increase from March.
Then in May, Marathon produced 226.6 BTC and 265.6 BTC in June. Each month in the second quarter saw a huge spike in its BTC production, thereby amounting to a total of 654.3 Bitcoins.
Marathon Digital Records An Increase In Bitcoin Holdings
According to the publicly traded firm, its BTC holdings have increased considerably. It holds 5784 bitcoins worth $201.6 million according to the July BTC price of $34,855/BTC.
Bitcoin is following a downward trend after dropping by 4% on the daily chart | Source: BTCUSD TradingView.com
The company also stated that its holdings include the 4,182 BTC purchased 6 months ago in January 2021 as an effort to become a “pure-play Bitcoin investment option”. The company will share a report of its earnings by next month.
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Another important piece of information in the report is that Marathon Digital has increased its fleet of miners to 19,395. In June, the company added 1720 miners as part of its goals to install above 100,000 before quarter 2 of 2022.
The crypto-mining company aims to increase its hash-rate power to 10.37 EH/s (exahashes per second). For now, the miners working for the company are generating 2.09 EHs.
Marathon Digital To Install More Mining Equipment
Also, in the report, Marathon Digital disclosed that 18,702 S-19 Pro ASIC miners came from Bitmain while 1056 Pro ASIC Miners are still on the way. Also, the company revealed that it had constructed containers for mining rigs at its facilities in Montana and Hardin.
According to the mining company, 12,000 miners will be added at the Hardin location in September end. It would also place 73,000 miners in Texas, where Compute North is hosting a 300-megawatt facility for them.
While speaking about the company’s recent surge in Bitcoin production, the CEO Fred Thiel disclosed that Marathon had upgraded and carried out routine maintenance on its systems.
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According to Thiel, the aim was to prepare for the global hashrate, which may start declining. The company also selected May, June, and July for the upgrade because there’s always a slower delivery in them.
Due to the upgrades and routine maintenance operation, the Marathon CEO states that the company is now positioned to produce more Bitcoins. He also maintained that the company is ready to utilize favorable mining conditions as they surface.
Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView.com
