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Riot Platforms buys $291M in BTC rigs as miners rakes in from Ordinals

Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms is buying 66,560 Bitcoin mining rigs from manufacturer MicroBT, in one of its largest orders of hash-rate in the firm’s history — ahead of the Bitcoin halving scheduled for April 2024.

The additional purchase agreement totaled $290.5 million, Riot stated in a Dec. 4 statement — meaning it paid an average of $4,360 for each machine.

The right-to-purchase option was included in Riot’s initial agreement with MicroBT when it agreed to buy 33,280 machines from MicroBT in June. The two firms have now updated this agreement to provide Riot with options to purchase up to 265,000 additional miners from MicroBT on the same terms as the new order. 

Riot’s CEO Jason Les said the purchase order is “the largest order of hash rate” in the company’s history and hopes the updated agreement will enable Riot’s mining performance to strengthen further.

Over 48,000 or 72% of the new machines will be MicroBT’s latest model, the M66S, which has a hash rate of 250 terahashes per second (TH/s), while the remaining machines will consist of the M66 (14,770) and M56S++ (3,720) models, Riot noted.

Altogether, the 66,560 miners will add 18 exahashes per second (EH/s) to Riot’s operations.

Purchase summary of Riot’s latest deal with MicroBT. Source: Riot Platforms

Riot said the first 33,280 miners bought in June will start to deploy in the first quarter of 2024, while the newest stack of 66,560 miners will deploy in the second half of 2024.

The firm estimates its self-mining hash rate capacity to reach 38 EH/s once the 99,840 rigs are fully installed and operating, which the first expects in the second half of 2025.

The firm previously cited the upcoming Bitcoin halving event — scheduled for April 2024 — as one of the main reasons behind its recent buying spree.

Riot’s stock, tickered RIOT, increased nearly 9% on Dec. 4, according to Google Finance. It is now up over 345% so far in 2023.

Bitcoin miners increase production; Hut 8 Corp begins trading

Bitcoin miner CleanSpark produced 666 BTC in November, up 5.2% from the 633 BTC it produced in October and up 24% from November 2022.

The firm’s CEO Zach Bradford said the firm saw a “significant increase” in production from fees, which he said is likely due to rising interest in Ordinals.

“This trend suggests that fees might soon become a larger source of revenue as bitcoin’s use cases grow and adoption increases,” Bradford added.

Meanwhile, NASDAQ-listed TeraWulf said it mined 323 BTC in November, up 3% from its October production. The firm said much of this was driven by higher network transaction fees but didn’t mention the impact of Ordinals.

Hut 8 completed its merger with United States-based mining firm Bitcoin Corp on Nov. 30 to form Hut 8 Corp, which started trading on the NASDAQ and Toronto Stock Exchange (ticker: HUT) on Dec. 4.

However, the merged entity's exchange debut seemingly stumbled, falling 11.75% and 7.44% on the day, according to Google Finance.

Change in HUT’s share price on the NASDAQ on Dec. 4. Source: Google Finance
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