Australia Bitcoin Mining company Iris Energy has revealed that it will nearly triple its mining capacity by adding thousands of mining rigs.
On February 13, the company said it had purchased an additional 4.4 exahashes per second (EH/s) Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro ASIC mining machine, increasing its self-mining capacity from 2.0 EH/s to 5.5 EH/s.
Based on the S19j Pro’s maximum hash rate of 100 terahertz per second (TH/s), the purchase adds an estimated 44,000 miners to its fleet, according to Cointelegraph’s calculations.
Daniel Roberts, co-founder and co-CEO of Iris, said the acquisition was "an important milestone" for the company, adding that it was a "challenging time for the industry and the market as a whole." Iris said the new miners would be installed at the company’s center, but did not mention where. The company operates three facilities at various locations in British Columbia, Canada, and one facility in Texas, United States.
The company used ASIC miner maker Bitmain’s remaining $67 million upfront to fund the rig purchase “without any additional cash outlay.” Iris has a 10 EH/s contract with Bitmain, which it says has "completely settled with no remaining commitments". It said it remained debt-free.
The company said it is also considering the option to sell the remaining mining rigs with more than 5.5 EH/s mining capacity to reinvest funds. In November, the company was forced to remove the miners it had pledged as collateral for a $107.8 million loan because the units generated “sufficient cash flow to service their respective debt financing obligations.”
Over the past few months, cryptocurrency miners have been squeezed from multiple directions, having to contend with low bitcoin prices amid high hash rates, high mining difficulty, and high energy prices.
The pressure has caused publicly listed bitcoin miners to dump nearly all of the BTC mined throughout 2022, with data from blockchain research firm Messari showing that Iris sold roughly 100% of the nearly 2,500 BTC mined that year. Hashrate Index’s analysis for February showed that publicly traded miners increased production in January, with better weather and stable electricity prices helping the surge. Iris produced 172 BTC in January and 123 BTC in December.
