CleanSpark Inc., a Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining company, announced yesterday that it signed agreements to purchase three Bitcoin mining facilities in Mississippi for $19.8 million in cash.
The purchases are expected to expand CleanSpark's mining capacity by 2.4 exahashes per second (EH/s) once fully integrated.
An exahash (abbreviated EH/s) is a measure of a Bitcoin mining machine's processing power. One exahash equals one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) hash calculations per second. Bitcoin mining machines compete to solve complex math problems. The more exahashes, the more problems a machine can attempt to solve, increasing its chances of mining BTC.
It's key timing as the next Bitcoin halving—expected to take place some time in April—will reduce the rewards paid to miners for validating transactions from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC.
The Bitcoin halving is an event that happens roughly every 4 years where the reward miners receive for processing transactions is cut in half. When miners add new bitcoin transactions to the blockchain, they are currently rewarded with 6.25 BTC per block.
The halving was designed to reduce the supply of new Bitcoins entering circulation, helping control inflation. As mining rewards decrease over time, transaction fees become an increasingly important reward for miners to keep incentivized to secure the network. The limited supply and predictable schedule of Bitcoin halvings are key features of its economic model.
Additionally, CleanSpark entered agreements to acquire a mining facility under construction in Dalton, Georgia which is projected to operate at 0.8 EH/s with about $6.9 million in further investment.
When fully operational, the Mississippi and Georgia purchases will grow CleanSpark's current Bitcoin mining hashrate from 10 EH/s to over 20 EH/s by early 2024, nearly doubling current capacity according to the company.
Headquartered in Utah, CleanSpark said its geographic expansion into Mississippi will add diversity along with expected efficiencies from clustering more mining in its existing Dalton footprint.
According to CleanSpark CEO Zach Bradford, the acquisitions position the computing power provider to continue running "best-in-class overhead costs" at scale.
The purchases follow January's announcement that CleanSpark secured an agreement to buy up to 160,000 next-generation bitcoin miners, which offers a path to achieving over 50 EH/s in the future. CleanSpark said it will fund the latest purchases with existing cash holdings.
Editor’s note: This article was written with the assistance of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Stacy Elliott.