Bitmain

Bitcoin miner Cipher buys 37K Bitmain Antminers for $99.5M

The new crypto mining equipment to be bought by Cipher is expected to deliver 7.1 EH/s of self-mining capacity by the first half of 2025.

Publicly traded Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm Cipher Mining is scaling operations with a new mega purchase of cryptocurrency mining devices.

Cipher will buy 37,396 units of Antminer T21 miners from the Chinese crypto mining giant Bitmain under a new agreement, the firm announced on Dec. 18. The new mining equipment to be bought is expected to deliver 7.1 exahashes per second (EH/s) of self-mining capacity by the first half of 2025, the announcement notes.

According to Cipher CEO Tyler Page, the purchase will allow Cipher to build its first 135 megawatts (MW) at its newly acquired Black Pearl site. Cipher has also secured the option to acquire an additional 45,706 miners, representing 8.7 EH/s, in 2024.

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Iris Energy to double hash rate in 2024 with $22M Bitmain T21 mining rig order

Iris Energy will receive mining hardware orders from Bitmain in the first six months of 2024, taking its operational mining capacity above 10 EH/s.

Renewable Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm Iris Energy is set to increase its total hash rate to 10 exahashes per second (EH/s) in 2024 by acquiring new Bitmain T21 mining rigs.

The company announced it had acquired an additional 1.6 EH/s of Bitmain T21 miners, set for delivery in the second quarter of 2024. The company currently has 5.6 EH/s of operational capacity as of December 2023.

The newest generation of Chinese manufacturer Bitmain’s mining hardware will also improve the efficiency of Iris’ operations from 29.5 joules per terahash (J/TH) to 24.8 J/TH. Iris invested $22.3 million in the latest order from Bitmain, pricing the hardware at $14 per terahash.

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Bitcoin mining firm Bitmain reportedly fined for tax violations in China

Bitmain has reportedly failed to pay personal income taxes in accordance with China’s laws on the administration of tax collection.

Beijing-based cryptocurrency mining firm Bitmain has reportedly violated tax regulations in China, with local authorities imposing major fines.

Bitmain Technologies has been slapped with a tax penalty from the Beijing Municipal Office of the State Administration of Taxation, the local news agency Sina Finance reported on April 11.

The authority fined Bitmain about 25 million Chinese yuan ($3.7 million), the report notes, citing details from China’s data registry of private and public companies, Qichacha.

According to the data, Bitmain was penalized on April 4, 2023, with the firm allegedly failing to pay personal income taxes in accordance with China’s laws on the administration of tax collection. The statement specifically referred to certain violations related to taxes on the income from Bitmain employees’ salaries, bonuses, labor dividends, allowances and more.

The tax authority also mentioned that tax inspectors delivered notice on certain tax violations to Bitmain in August 2022. So far, Bitmain’s Beijing unit has failed to pay personal income tax totaling 16.6 million yuan, or $2.4 million.

Founded in 2013, Bitmain is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency mining companies, widely known for manufacturing crypto mining-specific hardware and solutions. The company was reportedly forced to stop its business in China in October 2021 in response to a blanket ban on crypto imposed by the Chinese government in September 2021.

It’s unclear how the firm has been running its operations since. Bitmain did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

Related: Bitcoin proponents respond to New York Times’ BTC mining report

Despite regulatory uncertainty and a major bear crypto market in 2022, Bitmain’s business has continued to see success. In December 2022, Bitmain’s latest Antminer device reportedly sold out in less than a minute despite tanking mining profitability.

In September 2022, Bitmain founder Jihan Wu set up a $250 million fund to support the mining industry affected by the prolonged cryptocurrency winter. After leaving Bitmain in 2021, Wu founded Bitdeer, a new crypto mining firm and a spin-off of Bitmain.

Magazine: Asia Express: US and China try to crush Binance, SBF’s $40M bribe claim

‘Bad batch’ or flawed design? Compass Mining flags problems with new ASIC miners

The Bitcoin mining company is stumped as to why Bitmain changed the design of the S19 Antminers.

Bitcoin mining company Compass Mining claims to have found “three issues” in the ASIC design of the two new Antminer S19 miners, units that are primarily used to mine Bitcoin (BTC).

These issues could result in the machines overheating and, in some cases, completely breaking down.

The firm’s mining operations team warned in its March 6 post that “Miners need to be ready,” particularly those who purchased the S19 90T and S19 XP Antminers manufactured from 2022 onwards.

While the firm stated that “other versions could be affected as well,” the three flaws the firm identified stemmed from a lack of a peripheral interface controller (PIC) on units, the implementation of aluminum plating instead of laminate material, and the bunching up components onto just one side of the board.

According to Compass Mining, peripheral interface controllers, or PICs, are used to control and monitor a range of devices and systems across all sorts of electronics. In ASICs, they’re used to interface with hashboards individually, rather than addressing them as one unit.

This, however, has been removed in the most recent design, said the firm.

“In ASICs, a PIC sits at the top of a hashboard and allows each hashboard to be spoken to individually. Without it, you have to address the unit as one unit, instead of three hashboards.”

Compass Mining explained that this lack of PIC means that should one hashboard fail, the entire unit “fails completely.”

“Instead, a miner fails completely. We’ve found this to be the case with our S19 XP 141 TH units, which have failed completely when only one board is having issues.”

The red dot in the center represents the PIC, which was present on older models S19 Antminers. Source: Compass Mining

The mining company also said that by implementing aluminum plating on the hashboard, it may overheat and therefore lead to a higher “failure rate” than those built on printed circuit boards (PCBs) — which is what the old S19s were built on.

This would lead to “higher servicing needs,” the company said.

Meanwhile, the company has also raised concerns about the mining unit’s transition to aluminum, referring to it as “net negative.”

“We view the design decision to swap to aluminum-plating on hashboards as a net negative — one that will increase ASIC failure and underhashing while increasing service and maintenance costs,” it wrote.

The firm also explained that the presence of the aluminum would make it more difficult to replace malfunctioning chips:

“The lack of a PIC is compounded by the abrupt change to aluminum-plates on all hashboards. If a board overheats because of the aluminum’s heat dispersion properties, then the entire unit will go down instead of just one board.”

Compass Mining said they first realized the drop in performance when they deployed the S19 XP at its Texas partner facility — which could have been impacted by humidity and heat.

As for the third issue, the firm noted that by implementing the aluminium plating without changing the chassis — the base frame of the ASIC — would also contribute to the higher failure rates.

Because aluminium is very heat emissive, the metal will cause “convective heating” inside the chassis, the firm explained, before proposing some solutions:

“A solution to this in an air-cooled environment would be to increase the mass air flow sufficiently to dissipate the heat stored within the miner – a different design or stronger fans.”

Related: Bitcoin ASIC miner prices hovering at lows not seen in years

Other possible solutions proposed by the firm include finding third-party firmware that allows the frequency and voltage of the machine to maintain reasonable temperature and humidity levels in order to get more longevity out of the mining machines.

Some of the latest S19s do not have a PIC on each hashboard of the ASIC. Source: Compass Mining

The firm did however acknowledge that they may have just gotten a “bad batch” from Bitmain, noting it is “common knowledge” in Bitcoin mining not to buy the first batch of Bitcoin ASICs.

“Unknown errors are often only revealed over time, so it’s best to have others find them out first,” it said.

Cointelegraph reached out to Bitmain for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Bitmain Antminers have been used to mine proof-of-work cryptocurrencies such as BTC, Dogecoin (DOGE) and Litecoin (LTC).

CleanSpark boosts computing power by 37% with thousands of new Bitmain rigs

The Bitcoin miner announced the purchase of 20,000 new Antminer S19j Pro+ at a 25% discount, approximately $13.25 per terahash.

Bitcoin miner CleanSpark is growing its mining capacity in the United States with the purchase of 20,000 new Antminer S19j Pro+ units for $43.6 million. The acquisition is expected to boost the company’s computing power by 37% and brings the total number of miners purchased during the bear market to 46,500 units.

According to a statement on Feb. 16, CleanSpark will pay $32.3 million for the machines after applying coupons at a 25% discount or a total price per terahash (TH) of approximately $13.25. The Pro+ rigs are 22% more productive than their previous models and are planned to be delivered in batches between March and May.

The company is leveraging the market’s lower rig prices to boost its mining capacity, while Bitcoin’s (BTC) price rebounds. According to data from Hashrate Index, the current price per TH of ASICs of the same Bitcoin mining efficiency are currently at $15.09, well below the $90.72 seen 12 months ago. CleanSpark said the Antminer S19j Pro+ model offers a better return on investment compared to the same ASIC-generation machines.

“After they are fully operational, they are expected to add 2.44 EH/s to CleanSpark’s existing 6.6 EH/s of bitcoin mining computing power (for a total of 9 EH/s), constituting a 37% increase,” noted the company. 

Bitcoin ASIC price index. Source: Hashrate Index

CleanSpark claims that the acquired models continue to be more attractive to its operations in the current market conditions. “The S19j Pro+ delivers 122 terahash per machine and saves an average of 2 joules of energy per terahash compared to the S19j Pro model of the same generation.”

A total of 15,000 of the new machines will be delivered to the company’s locations in the city of Washington, Georgia. CleanSpark disclosed in January a $16-million expansion in the site, which is forecasted to increase its hash rate by 2.2 exahashes per second (EH/s), with its total hash rate reaching as high as 8.7 EH/s. The facility was acquired by the company in August last year before taking over Mawson Infrastructure Group’s facility in Sandersville.

After a tough year in 2022 with declining Bitcoin prices and high electricity costs, publicly listed mining companies saw a rise in mining production and hash rates in January, according to an analysis from Hashrate Index. CleanSpark boosted its Bitcoin mining production by 50% during the month, reaching a record monthly production of 697 BTC. Its hash rate rose to 6.6 EH/s from 6.2 EH/s in December.

Other public mining companies, such as Core Scientific, Riot, Marathon and Cipher have seen significant increases in Bitcoin production in the past month, helped by stable electricity prices and better weather conditions in the United States.

Celsius bankruptcy judge authorizes the sale of $7.4M worth of Bitmain coupons

The judge’s ruling does not require Celsius debtors to sell the Bitmain coupons, which would need the consent of the committee of unsecured creditors.

Debtors for crypto lender Celsius Network have the authority to sell coupons for mining firm Bitmain coupons worth roughly $7.4 million following a ruling from a bankruptcy judge.

In a Feb. 16 court filing, United States Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn said it was in the “best interests of the Debtors’ estates, their creditors, and other parties” to allow Celsius debtors to sell their Bitmain coupons. The judge’s ruling does not require the debtors to liquidate the holdings in question, which would need the consent of the committee of unsecured creditors.

interim Celsius CEO Christopher Ferraro claimed in a Feb. 9 declaration that the debtors expected to sell the Bitmain coupons for roughly $7.4 million. According to Ferraro, the coupons allowed interested parties to buy Bitmain mining rigs with a 10% to 30% discount on future purchases.

“While $7.4 million is a significant discount from the Bitmain Coupons’ nearly $37 million face-value, the Debtors believe that such a price is commensurate with the market and preferable to the Bitmain Coupons expiring worthless in the Debtors’ possession,” Ferraro said at the time. “Based on the Debtors’ marketing efforts for the sale of similar assets, the Debtors anticipate that selling the Bitmain Coupons at a significant discount to their face-value is required.”

Celsius debtors’ holdings of Bitmain coupons as of Feb. 9.

Judge Glenn’s ruling followed debtors for the crypto lending firm presenting a restructuring plan on Feb. 15, in which Celsius chose NovaWulf Digital Management as a sponsor. The proposed plan had NovaWulf offering a direct cash contribution of between $45 million and 55 million to the newly restructured company.

Related: Celsius creditors committee proposes suing Mashinsky, other Celsius execs

Bankruptcy proceedings for major firms affected during the 2022 market crash are underway across courts in the United States. Crypto exchange FTX — facing scrutiny in bankruptcy court as well as being at the center of a criminal case in federal court — recently issued subpoenas to company insiders, including former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Iris Energy to nearly triple hash rate with estimated 44,000 new BTC miners

With the tough conditions that faced Bitcoin miners last year, Iris’ co-founder said the purchase was a “significant milestone” for the company.

Australia-based Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Iris Energy has revealed it will nearly triple its mining capacity with the addition of thousands of mining rigs.

On Feb. 13 the firm said it purchased an additional 4.4 exahashes per second (EH/s) worth of Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro ASIC miners, bringing its self-mining 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 an estimated 44,000 miners to its fleet, according to Cointelegraph’s calculations.

Daniel Roberts, Iris’ co-founder and co-CEO, said the purchase “is a significant milestone” for the company, adding it has been a “challenging period for both the industry and markets more generally.”

Iris said the new miners will be installed in the company’s centers but did not mention in which locations. The firm operates three facilities in various locations in British Columbia, Canada and one in Texas in the United States.

Iris’ flagship site in Mackenzie, British Columbia. Source: Iris Energy

The company used $67 million of remaining prepayments to ASIC miner manufacturer Bitmain to fund the purchase of the rigs “without any additional cash outlay.”

Iris had a 10 EH/s contract with Bitmain which it says “have been fully resolved, with no remaining commitments.” It stated it remains debt free.

The firm said it’s also considering options to sell surplus miners above its 5.5 EH/s of mining capacity to re-invest the funds.

Related: Core Scientific to hand over 27K rigs to pay $38M debt

Last November the company was forced to unplug miners used as collateral on a $107.8 million loan, as the units were producing “insufficient cash flow to service their respective debt financing obligations.”

Over the past few months, cryptocurrency miners have been squeezed from multiple directions, having to confront low Bitcoin prices amid high hash rates, high mining difficulty and high energy prices.

The pressure caused publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies to sell off almost all of the BTC mined throughout 2022 with data from blockchain research firm Messari showing Iris sold around 100% of the nearly 2,500 BTC it mined that year.

 A February analysis from Hashrate Index shows that publicly listed miners increased their production in January with better weather and stable electricity prices helping the production surge. Iris’ January production resulted in 172 BTC, compared to 123 BTC in December.

Cloud mining firm BitFuFu postpones merger with SPAC until May

Bitfufu’s plans to go public have been delayed for the second time. The company is the cloud mining arm of Chinese mining giant Bitmain.

Cloud mining firm Bitfufu, one of Bitmain’s crypto firms, is delaying for the second time its plans to go public via a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), according to a Feb. 7 statement. 

The company announced its plans to go public in January 2022 through a merger with the SPAC company Arisz Acquisition Corp, anticipating to be publicly listed in the third quarter of that year and a pro forma enterprise value of nearly $1.5 billion. The new decision postpones the public listing to May, helping the companies to consummate the business combination.

“The Extension provides Arisz with additional time to complete its proposed business combination with Finfront Holding Company (“BitFuFu”),” the statement said.

The extension is the second of two three-month extensions permitted under Arisz’s governing documents. In other words, unless its shareholders approve a revision in its governing documents, the crypto cloud company is unable to delay the merger again. Alongside the new deadline, the move will provide an additional $690,000 to Arisz’s operations.

Related: How to mine Bitcoin at home

BitFuFu was founded with early investment from crypto hardware firm Bitmain and Bitmain’s core founding team members. In February 2022, Bitmain and BitFuFu announced a strategic partnership to offer standardized crypto-mining services.

Market conditions and the crypto winter have impacted many crypto firm’s public listing plans. On Dec. 5, the company issuer of USD Coin (USDC) Circle disclosed the mutual termination of its merger with the SPAC company Concord Acquisition. Circle was valued at $4.5 billion when the deal was announced in July 2021.

Crypto firm Bullish also announced in December that a deal to go public had been terminated after reaching an agreement with Far Peak Acquisition. The company cited market conditions and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s work to introduce new frameworks for digital assets as reasons for not moving forward.

The IPOX SPAC index benchmark performance, which tracks the aftermarket performance of SPAC companies, has fallen by 9.04% over the past 12 months.

Core Scientific files motion to sell over $6M in Bitmain coupons

A court filing shows that some conditions apply to the coupons, making them useless for Core Scientific’s business.

Bankrupt Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm, Core Scientific, filed an emergency motion on Jan. 25, seeking to sell Bitmain coupons worth $6.6 million, according to court records. 

As per the filing, some conditions applied to the coupons make them useless for Core Scientific’s business. Specifically, the coupons can “only be used to pay 30% of any new order of S19 Miners from Bitmain, and cannot be exchanged with Bitmain for cash.”

The coupons are limited to S19 models, which provide a lower hash rate output than Bitmain’s recent models. “The Debtors do not believe that utilizing their liquidity to purchase new S19 Miners, even with the availability of the Bitmain Coupons, is the best use of the Debtors’ cash,” claimed the company.

Moreover, the Bitmain coupons are due to expire between March and April of 2023, when the company anticipates having emerged from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Core Scientific also noted that it would not acquire additional S19 miners under Chapter 11 or afterward.

Along with the motion, the company has been discussing with Bitmain and two potential third parties interested in buying the coupons at a significant discount. In particular, the sale of $1.9 million of Bitmain coupons for $285,000 and the sale of $4.8 million in coupons for approximately $713,000 represent 15% of the coupons’ face value.

The sale would result in an aggregate of nearly $1.0 million to Core Scientific’s balance sheets. The company also noted:

“While the aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.0 million would represent a significant discount to the approximately $6.7 million face value of the Bitmain Coupons, it would also represent significant value above what these Bitmain Coupons are worth to the Debtors and their estates: zero.”

According to the filing, the crypto winter resulted in a flood of S19 Miners being offered for sale on the secondary market, driving prices down. “As such, recent transactions for S19 Miner coupons on the coupon exchange have occurred at values of between 15% and 25% of the coupon’s face value.”

Among the largest cryptocurrency mining companies in the United States, Core Scientific filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Dec. 21, 2022, due to rising energy costs, declining revenues and a slump in Bitcoin prices. The company recently obtained court approval to access a $37.5 million loan from existing creditors amid liquidity issues.

Crypto lender Matrixport seeks $100M funding despite lending crisis

Bitmain-backed crypto lender Matrixport is the other half of a new funding round targeting a $100 million raise.

Matrixport, the cryptocurrency firm founded by Bitmain co-founder Wu Jihan, is in the process of raising $100 million in funding despite the ongoing crypto market crisis.

Lead investors have already committed $50 million for Matrixport’s new funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 25. The deal has yet to be finalized as Matrixport is still looking for investors for the other half of the round.

According to the company, the new round is part of Matrixport’s usual funding agenda. “Matrixport routinely engages with key stakeholders as part of its normal course of business, including investors keen to participate and enable our vision as a digital assets financial services provider,” the firm’s public relations head Ross Gan said.

Matrixport’s new funding comes a year after the firm conducted a $100 million Series C funding round conducted in August 2021, becoming a unicorn with a $1 billion valuation.

The fundraising was led by major global venture capital firms, including DST Global, C Ventures and K3 Ventures. Other contributors in the round included major industry investors like Tiger Global, Qiming Venture Partners, CE Innovation Capital and A&T Capital, alongside existing investors like Polychain, Dragonfly Capital, Lightspeed, IDG Capital and others.

According to Bloomberg data, Matrixport handles $5 billion of trades each month and has tens of billions of dollars of assets under management and custody. The firm reportedly employs close to 300 people.

Established in February 2019, Matrixport is one of the largest cryptocurrency lenders in Asia, offering a wide range of crypto services, including trading and custody. The company also offers cryptocurrency and stablecoin loans, as well as zero-cost loans with a 0% interest rate and liquidation protection.

Matrixport is one of the few crypto lending platforms that appear to have not been affected by the ongoing crisis of cryptocurrency lending. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, some of the biggest crypto lending platforms including Celsius and BlockFi have faced major issues this year due to the ongoing bear market and the associated crisis of cryptocurrency lending.

Related: Crypto lender Hodlnaut reportedly faces police investigation in Singapore

Wu’s crypto company also said that it wasn’t too much affected by the ongoing FTX contagion, reporting a few issues due to the crash of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange. On Nov. 11, Matrixport reported that 79 of its users suffered losses in the aftermath of FTX issues, adding that the affected products included the BTC Fixed Income Products and Victoria BTC Fund Products.

“We would need to emphasize that Matrixport’s products are subject to strict segregation from one another so that a single impacted product will not affect the other products as the underlying asset and fund flow are segregated,” the firm stated.