Global Crypto Mining News (Oct 25-Oct 31)

Author | Colin Wu

Nov 1

1.

According to Bloomberg, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (a private research organization), institutions/exchanges and others controlled about 5.5 million bitcoins at the end of last year, and individual giant whales controlled about 8.5 million. In addition, the top 1,000 individual investors control about 3 million. In addition, the top 10% of miners control 90% of bitcoin mining hashrate, and 0.1% (about 50 miners) control 50% of the hashrate.

2.

According to CoinDesk, interest from institutional investors in bitcoin and crypto mining stocks is growing, although most of these investors are still relatively new to the sector and have reservations about the valuation of mining stocks, Wall Street firm D.A. Davidson’s analyst wrote on Monday.

Analyst Christopher Brendler, who recently initiated research coverage of the crypto miners with a positive outlook, said he estimates that about 15% of the Wall Street brokers that cover the payments sector are taking bitcoin seriously now, up from about 5% at the start of this year. He noted that almost all the investors who are already involved in the sector agreed with his near-term bull case for the crypto miners, but also had plenty of skepticism, mostly around valuation. Marathon Digital and Riot Blockchain have risen about 1,500% and 600%, respectively, over the last twelve months, while the price of bitcoin rose 377% in the same time period.

“We admit traditional valuation metrics may not apply in this sector as future cash flows are exceedingly difficult to predict,” Brendler added. However, it’s worth noting that crypto miners are highly leveraged to bitcoin prices as they derive most of their revenue from mining digital currencies and tend to hold as many of the minted digital coins as possible on their balance sheets.

3.

According to kapital.kz, figures show that legal mining could bring more than $1.5 billion to Kazakhstan’s economy over the next five years, with potential tax revenues of more than $300 million. But that’s just the current “legal miners”; if you add gray miners to the mix, that number would be multiplied by two.

4.

As miners move to Kazakhstan, it poses a challenge to the country’s power grid’s ability to generate electricity. In the near future, Inter RAO, the Russian government’s state-owned utility, may support Kazakhstan’s power grid. Alexandra Panina, chair of the board of directors of Inter RAO Lietuva, expressed her concern about Kazakhstan’s energy shortage. In addition to sourcing power from the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Magzum Mirzagalieve recently listed three new investments in the national grid, in addition to state-owned power company Samruk Energy’s plans to restore 4,000 MW of coal-fired power plants. President Tokayev also said that Kazakhstan needs a nuclear power plant.

5.

Missouri’s largest utility has built a data center at one of its coal-fired power plants for mining bitcoins, according to the Associated Press. officials at Ameren Corp. say this could help stabilize power demand, avoid reduced efficiency and bring back production again. The company has already mined more than 20 bitcoins. But critics question whether the $1 million project is artificially raising demand for coal energy.

6.

On October 26th, Spark Pool released a note on the disposal of remaining assets and the cessation of all services: the pool will only retain the function of withdrawing existing balances for account mining users (anonymous mining users have completed balance liquidation) from 00:00 (UTC+8) on November 1, 2021, and will no longer provide other related services. (Wu Blockchain)

7.

According to coindesk, NASDAQ-listed crypto mining company Hive Blockchain announced today that it has ordered 6,500 Avalon bitcoin miners from Canaan, having purchased 6,400 and 4,000 in January and August of this year respectively. The current total hashrate is 1.2EH/s and is expected to reach 2EH/s by December and 3EH/s by March next year. current Hive Blockchain share price is $3.77 and market cap is $1.45 billion.

8.

The Nasdaq-listed crypto mining company Mawson has partnered with Quinbrook to establish a mining hub in Byron Bay, Australia, using renewable energy for mining. Byron Bay is likely to become a hub for bitcoin mining in Australia, with a 10 percent tax discount for mining with renewable energy sources there. mawson CEO James Manning said the partnership, with 4,000 new bitcoin miners, will increase operational capacity by 11.7 percent by mid-2022.

9.

Rhodium Enterprises plans to go public on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker RHDM, with plans to raise up to $100 million. The company began mining in September 2020, and documents show the miner had revenue, net income and adjusted EBITDA of $48.2 million, $14.9 million and $40.9 million, respectively, for the six months ended June 30. Rhodium says its proprietary liquid cooling technology can extend the mechanical life of its bitcoin miners by 30 to 50%. The company currently runs 22,600 miners in Texas at 80 MW of power capacity with a total hashrate of about 1.8 EH/s, and expects to add an additional 45 MW of power and increase its hashrate to about 2.7 EH/s by the end of the year.

10.

Australian bitcoin miner Iris Energy has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to raise $100 million to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol “IREN”, with JPMorgan, Canaccord Genuity, Citigroup, Macquarie Capital and Cowen as joint bookrunners for the transaction.

Iris Energy initially planned to go public through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) and raise $300-$500 million; later in August Iris Energy announced on its Twitter feed that it had filed a Form F-1 with the SEC for a direct listing on NASDAQ, which may occur in the fourth quarter of 2021.

11.

Canadian bitcoin mining company Bitfarms is building two new mining sites with a total capacity of 78 MW in Sherbrooke, Quebec, which are expected to be completed in two phases next year. The two new mines are expected to accommodate 21,000 new mining machines and add 2.1 EH/s of hashrate.

12.

Web 3.0 project Mask Network has announced a strategic investment from blockchain storage protocol Arweave to support Mask’s future strategic growth, which Mask says is in the form of a mutual exchange of protocol tokens. Mask says Arweave has been consistently supportive of open web projects throughout its history, and has been in collaboration with Mask for some time, including providing Mask Network with financial support in May 2020. The file service feature previously introduced in the Mask extension was created using the Arweave blockchain solution, allowing users to share files directly on social media, and 2,865 files have been stored since its launch.

13.

Environmentalists Abi Buddington and Yvonne Taylor claim they have been threatened by Dale Iwin, CEO of bitcoin miner Greenidge Generation. The news follows a spat between Greenidge, a company that mines bitcoin in upstate New York and has long been criticized for allegedly harming the environment around its mining facilities, and New York environmentalists.

14.

Perpetual Industries Inc. announced that it has moved into a new corporate facility in Auburn, Indiana. The 22,000 square foot facility will serve as the new corporate headquarters, providing Perpetual with additional space to meet the growing needs of its research and development program, as well as space to execute a large scale Bitcoin mining center expansion for its cryptocurrency division.

15.

According to Bloomberg, crypto fund company Cosmos launched a crypto miner ETF in Australia on Thursday: the Cosmos Global Digital Miners Access ETF, trading under the ticker symbol DIGA. The ETF will trade on the Chi-X Australia exchange and will invest in cryptocurrency mining companies such as Marathon Digital Holdings, Riot Blockchain, Hive Blockchain and Hut 8 Mining. Cosmos is also working with Australian regulators and exchanges to eventually launch a physical bitcoin ETF.

16.

San Francisco-based bitcoin technology and financial services company River Financial has launched a new service called “River Mining” that will allow its customers to purchase mining machines and start mining without having to set up and maintain their own computers, with the resulting bitcoins deposited directly into their River account. Customers can purchase Bitmain’s Antminer S19j Pro from the service and manage the mining process through a mobile app. The company is currently opening pre-orders and waitlists on its website, and customers only need to pay for one mining machine to get started.

17.

Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) — British financial website MoneySuperMarket recently conducted a study calculating the cost of electricity consumed per bitcoin transaction, and based on the global average cost of electricity of 9.0 cents per kWh over the past 12 months, the cost of electricity used by users to make a purchase, sale or transfer of bitcoin mining makes $176.

This means that if you want to use Bitcoin to buy a latte or pay for a small transaction like walking your dog, the cost may be higher than thought, and may be a blow to proponents who support BTC and believe that the associated transactions are cheaper.

18.

According to Jiangsu Ganzhou Economic and Technological Development Zone, in order to further improve the prevention and control of virtual currency mining and trading speculation risk, recently, the District Office of non-permanent in conjunction with relevant departments to the scene to combat virtual currency mining and trading behavior special investigation and rectification work.

The investigation site, the staff through a series of ways to the enterprise risk investigation and rectification. Next, the district will strengthen publicity and education, to promote to the public the illegality of virtual currency speculation and other related business activities, the danger and its manifestations, etc., to enhance the public awareness of risk prevention.

19.

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) — CryptoQuant.com tweeted that miners are still accumulating bitcoins. Analyst IT Tech said, “The amount of bitcoin [miners] currently hold is similar to the level it was in May when the price was below $40,000.

20.

On October 30 iPollo said it was launching two series of miners, the iPollo B1 and iPollo Darksteel. The B1 is a bitcoin miner with an energy efficiency ratio between 35W/T and 55W/T; the Darksteel comes in three models, offering solutions for Swarm Filecoin and Chia, respectively. (Wu Blockchain)

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