Overview
Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms has announced its purchase of 66,560 Bitcoin mining rigs from manufacturer MicroBT, marking one of its largest orders of hash-rate to date. The additional purchase agreement, which totals $290.5 million, will strengthen Riot's mining performance ahead of the Bitcoin halving scheduled for April 2024.
The Details
The right-to-purchase option was a part of Riot's initial agreement with MicroBT when it agreed to buy 33,280 machines in June. The updated agreement now allows Riot to purchase up to 265,000 additional miners from MicroBT on the same terms as the new order. Riot's CEO, Jason Les, called it "the largest order of hash rate" in the company's history and hopes it will further enhance their mining operations.
Machine Breakdown
Out of the 66,560 miners, 72% will be MicroBT's latest model, the M66S, with a hash rate of 250 terahashes per second (TH/s). The remaining machines will consist of the M66 and M56S++ models. Together, these miners will add 18 exahashes per second (EH/s) to Riot's operations.
Deployment Timeline
Riot stated that the first batch of 33,280 miners will start to deploy in the first quarter of 2024, while the new order will be deployed in the second half of 2024. Once fully installed and operating, Riot estimates its self-mining hash rate capacity to reach 38 EH/s, which is expected to happen in the second half of 2025.
Stock Performance
Riot's stock, tickered RIOT, increased nearly 9% on Dec. 4, adding to its overall growth of over 345% in 2023, according to Google Finance data.
Other Bitcoin Miners' Performance
Bitcoin miner CleanSpark reported producing 666 BTC in November, a 5.2% increase from October and a 24% increase from November 2022. The firm attributed this growth to a significant increase in production from fees, likely due to rising interest in Ordinals. NASDAQ-listed TeraWulf mined 323 BTC in November, up 3% from October, with much of the increase driven by higher network transaction fees.
Hut 8's Merger Debut
Hut 8 completed its merger with Bitcoin Corp on Nov. 30, forming Hut 8 Corp, which began trading on the NASDAQ and Toronto Stock Exchange on Dec. 4. However, the merged entity's exchange debut saw a decline of 11.75% and 7.44% on the day, according to Google Finance.
