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In a move to boost its Bitcoin mining operations, publicly traded Bitcoin mining firm Cipher Mining (CIFR) has announced a significant acquisition of cryptocurrency mining devices. The firm will acquire 37,396 units of Antminer T21 miners from Bitmain, one of the largest crypto mining firms in the industry.
The agreement, which was disclosed on December 18, notes that the newly acquired mining equipment is expected to provide Cipher with 7.1 exahashes per second (EH/s) of self-mining capacity by the first half of 2025.
As part of the acquisition, Cipher’s CEO, Tyler Page, stated the strategic significance of this purchase. He noted that it will enable the company to establish its initial 135-megawatt (MW) capacity at the recently acquired Black Pearl site. Cipher has also recently secured an option to acquire an additional 45,706 miners, which will represent a further 8.7 EH/s going into 2024.
The acquisition also allows Cipher to lock in the price for mining rigs at rate of $14 per terahash (TH). Page highlighted that this will become more and more important when the crypto market heads into a bull run:
“We are controlling our biggest potential capital expense and locking in favorable terms ahead of what we believe will be a bull market for Bitcoin.”
Cipher is a subsidiary of Bitfury, a prominent cryptocurrency mining firm that reportedly mined nearly 3% of all Bitcoin ever mined, equivalent to approximately 600,000 BTC, as of March 2021.
In November 2023, the company reportedly undertook a $7 million purchase agreement for a new Texas site. The agreement was settled in common stocks, newly issued at the time.
The anticipated operational commencement of this site in 2025 is expected to hold a potential capacity of up to 300 megawatts. Cipher has been actively expanding its mining infrastructure throughout 2023, with the major acquisition of 11,000 Canaan A1346 mining rigs in May. The company’s increasingly aggressive approach to expand comes after it was listed as a publicly traded entity, a shift that followed a $2 billion merger deal with the Nasdaq-listed Good Works Acquisition Corp.
This recent mega-purchase positions Cipher as a key player in the competitive and rapidly evolving cryptocurrency mining industry.