Global Crypto Mining News (Sep 19 to Sep 25)

Crypto lending platform Maple has set up a $300 million credit fund for bitcoin miners, according to Bloomberg. The fund plans to obtain loans through a mix of bitcoin mining equipment, power assets and tokens, and the crypto assets will make up only a small portion of the collateral. The loans will have terms of 12 to 18 months and interest rates ranging from 15% to 20%.

Bitmain announced that it has signed a purchase order with German mining group CTCAP to double the hashrate of its new water-cooled mine in Iceland, powered by 100% renewable energy. CTCAP’s new water-cooled mine will come online on November 1, 2022, with another mining project due to be completed in the first quarter of 2023.

The heads of several top U.S. banks, including Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, said Wednesday they didn’t have any plans to finance cryptocurrency miners. Raising capital has become difficult for miners this year as the price of bitcoin (BTC) has slumped and energy prices have skyrocketed. Industry participants also expect some mergers and acquisitions as miners grapple with lower crypto prices.（CoinDesk）

A coalition of 10 mining companies has formed to protest proposed changes to Canada’s Excise Tax Act introduced in February. The Canadian Department of Finance proposed this change without consulting miners and sufficient explanation as to why mining should no longer be considered a commercial activity. This change would create a hidden tax that increases crypto mining costs by 5–15%.

Cipher Mining is looking to sell up to $250 million in stock from time to time in what is known as an “at-the-market” (ATM) offering. Investment bank H.C. Wainwright will be handling the transaction. An ATM rights offering is a follow-on stock offering by a listed company to raise capital over a period of time.（CoinDesk）

In the last month alone, bitcoin hashrate has risen 50 percent, and the rising difficulty of mining has put pressure on miners’ profits, which may mean that a greater percentage of miners’ bitcoins will be sold to cover costs. CryptoQuant analyst Julio Moreno said that given bitcoin’s current lower price, there could be another bitcoin miner capitulation event.

Marathon CEO Fred Thiel believes U.S. regulators should create incentives for bitcoin miners to use renewable energy and disincentives for fossil fuel-based sources. Thiel argued that the White House’s findings essentially encourage people to look at ways to make proof of work more energy efficient while reducing the impacts on the environment.（The Block）

Bitfarms, a global Bitcoin mining company, has started operations in its mining megafarm located in Argentina. The farm, launched on September 16, is currently generating 10 megawatts (MW) of mining power during the first phase and will scale operations to be fully operational next year. Bitfarms estimates it will contribute 50 MW to fulfill the company’s mining goals in 2023.（Bitcoin.com）

Crypto miner Bitdeer Technologies has bought a maximum security physical safety vault, Le Freeport, for S$40 million ($28.4 million), according to Bloomberg. Jihan Wu confirmed the transaction. According to the records of the accounting regulator, the acquisition transaction took place in July.

One of the people familiar with the matter revealed that about 3/4 of Le Freeport’s acquisition money went to creditors such as DBS Group Holdings. Yves Bouvier and other shareholders, who had held a 70% stake in Le Freeport, received about S$5 million (nearly $3.55 million) after paying off debt and covering costs.

As previously reported, Bitdeer’s SPAC merger has been submitted for another extension, which will be postponed for three months, with the merger date pushed back to December. Bitdeer is scheduled to go public in November 2021 at a $4 billion valuation through a merger with blank check company Blue Safari Group Acquisition Corp.（CoinDesk）

10.

Bitcoin miner Marathon closed a deal with hosting provider Applied Blockchain that will secure the company at least 200 MW of energy capacity, with the option to increase it to 270 MW.

In addition, Applied Blockchain will break ground on its 180 MW facility in North Dakota, USA, with operations expected to begin in the first half of 2023, while it entered into a five-year power deal with a local utility partner in September, primarily considering available transmission capacity and excess wind generation.（TheBlock）

11.

According to OKLink data, affected by the shift of Ether consensus mechanism, the total number of Ether miners’ addresses transferred out over 254,000 ETH (worth over 340 million USD at current price) since September. Among them, nearly 23,000 ETH were transferred on September 15 alone, the highest single-day transfer record in September. It is understood that after the Ethernet merger upgrade, ETC became the first choice of most miners for network migration, and the full network arithmetic of ETC once exceeded 300TH/s on the day of the merger, reaching 307.33 TH/s.

In addition, the Ethernet fork network ETHW and ETF have also become the choice of some miners for network migration. According to the data of OKLink multi-chain browser, the current 24-hour on-chain transaction volume of ETHW network exceeds 7.21 million ETHW (about 44.6 million USD), and the 24-hour on-chain transaction volume of ETF network exceeds 1.94 million ETF (about 4.46 million USD).

12.

Bitmain said in a Tuesday tweet that it will drop the price of an Antminer S19 Pro 100 terahash (TH) model to $19/TH with a limit of 200 units. The price of bitcoin mining equipment has fallen by about 70 percent this year.（CoinDesk）

13.

Following the publicly-listed mining operation Terawulf’s announcement that the firm’s Lake Mariner mining data center is up and running with 30 MW of capacity, 11 days later, the company has revealed the operation of nearly 12,000 miners at the facility in New York.（News Bitcoin）

14.

Bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain is suing hosting firm Northern Data, alleging breach of contract and failure to disclose important information.

The lawsuit relates to the Texas Whinstone bitcoin mine, slated to be one of the world’s largest by power capacity, which Riot acquired from Northern Data just last year for $651 million — $80 million cash and 11.8 million shares of Riot stock.

In the lawsuit filed on Sept. 7 in a Delaware court, Riot claims that Germany’s Northern Data failed to disclose $84 million in liabilities to a third party, which the third party asked for in April of this year. At the time, Riot was trying to negotiate the final closing price for the acquisition but Northern Data “delayed and obfuscated,” the lawsuit claims. Riot also says that Northern Data continues to stall negotiations and has delayed paying almost $114 million it owes to Riot.（CoinDesk）

15.

Compute North filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, according to a filing. A Compute North spokesperson revealed that its CEO Dave Perrill resigned due to pressure from the falling crypto market, but would continue to serve on the board.

The filing is likely to have negative implications for the industry. Compute North is one of the largest data center providers for miners, and has multiple deals with other larger mining companies. Compute North has four facilities in the U.S. — two in Texas and one in both South Dakota and Nebraska, according to its website. Its partners include Marathon Digital, BitNile Holdings, Bit Digital, Singapore-based Atlas Mining, Chinese Crypto miner The9 and others.

As previously reported, Compute North closed $385 million in equity and debt financing in February of this year. The $85 million in equity financing was co-led by Mercuria and Generate Capital, with participation from National Grid Partners, a subsidiary of National Grid. $300 million in debt financing was also funded by Generate Capital.（CoinDesk）

16.

Bitcoin miner Iris Energy signs $100M equity deal with B. Riley. B. Riley may buy up to 25 million of IREN ordinary shares in the 24 months starting Friday. B. Riley would have a 31% stake in Iris Energy after the transaction is completed.（CoinDesk）

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