CleanSpark Inc. and Riot Platforms Inc. led the group, spending as much as $473 million and $415 million, respectively, on the rigs.<\/p>\n
The machines are being purchased to help miners increase efficiency for their operations and lock in favorable electricity rates.<\/p>\n
Miners are in constant search of cheap power because they use energy-hungry computers to validate records of transactions on the blockchain to earn rewards in the form of Bitcoin.<\/p>\n
\u201cScale matters because you can get machines for better rates, bigger energy deals and drive down the cost of development,\u201d said Asher Genoot, chief executive at Hut 8 Corp., one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miners.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have scale, you have more marginal and growth profits and you can cover your big costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
All the activity is driving miners to consume energy at a record pace. Last month, miners drew a record 19.6 gigawatts of power, up from 12.1 gigawatts the same period in 2023, according to an estimate by Coin Metrics.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s equivalent to the electricity capacity that can power about 3.8 million homes in Texas, where many of the mining operations are located.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we assume power draw was consistent over the course of the month, we can multiply by 696 (24 hours times 29 days) to get 13.64 TWh (terawatt-hours) of energy consumed by the Bitcoin network over the course of last month,\u201d said Coin Metrics Senior Solutions Engineer Parker Merritt.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin mining consumed 121 terawatt-hours of power in 2023, the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance estimates \u2014 similar to Argentina\u2019s use.<\/p>\n
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Bitcoin miners were some of the best performing stocks last year, allowing the companies to raise capital by selling newly issued shares through \u201cat-the-market\u201d offering programs.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s in addition to the rising value of Bitcoin held on the books of the miners. Bitcoin reached a record high of more than $70,000 on March 8.<\/p>\n
The rising price of Bitcoin \u201callows most miners to remain profitable,\u201d said Zachary Bradford, CEO and president at CleanSpark, adding that his firm was profitable at lower prices.<\/p>\n
Shares of Marathon and CleanSpark have risen by almost 600% and 900%, respectively, since December 2022.<\/p>\n
According to TheMinerMag data, both firms along with Riot, Hive Digital Technologies and Iris Energy Ltd. raised over $2 billion from selling shares since June 2023, when the crypto market started to rebound.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most efficient miners will benefit the most as the increase in Bitcoin price will push even more profits to the bottom line,\u201d said Bradford.<\/p>\n
Miners are constantly competing for a reward since the network only gives it to the first to successfully process a unit of data.<\/p>\n
The fierce competition is evidenced in mining difficulty, a measure of the amount of computing power to mine Bitcoin.<\/p>\n