On May 7th, Bitfarms mined 21,000th BTC with renewable power, representing 1/1,000 of all BTC to ever be mined. Bitfarms’ mining operations began in Quebec, Canada, and are expanding to Washington State and Paraguay in the United States.
2.
Apollo Global Management, the distressed-investing specialist that oversees more than half a trillion dollars of assets, is participating in a bid to acquire stricken cryptocurrency lender Celsius. Apollo has also previously provided a loan to bankrupt bitcoin miner Core Scientific, as well as attempting to purchase debt from FTX and engaging with Genesis.（CoinDesk）
3.
Cipher Mining today jointly announced an agreement whereby Cipher has purchased from Canaan 11,000 new A1346 model mining machines to be delivered in the third quarter of 2023 for use at Cipher’s Odessa, Texas facility.
4.
Some bitcoin miners are moving into the AI space. hut 8 said its HPC business generated about $16.9 million in revenue in 2022, or about 11% of total revenue, after only one year of operation, driven in part by AI customers. Hive Blockchain purchased $66 million worth of GPUs from Nvidia in early 2021 Hive Blockchain, which purchased $66 million worth of GPUs from Nvidia in early 2021, said it aims to grow its HPC revenue tenfold, to $10 million, by 2024.（Bloomberg）
5.
Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital (MARA) has formed a joint venture (JV) with Zero Two — backed by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund — to create the Middle East’s first large-scale immersion bitcoin mining operation.
The White House is campaigning for a proposed tax advocating that crypto miners in the country pay an amount equal to 30% of their energy costs. The new project, known as the Abu Dhabi Global Markets Joint Venture (ADGM), will begin with the development of two mines with a total capacity of 250 megawatts (MW).
Powered by Abu Dhabi’s excess energy, it will use liquid immersion cooled miners. The initial investment is approximately $406 million, with Zero Two holding 80% of ADGM and Marathon holding 20%.（CoinDesk）
6.
Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital Holdings said it received another subpoena from the US Securities and Exchange Commission related to an investigation of a Montana data center that may involve potential violations of securities laws.
Marathon said, “We understand that the SEC may be investigating whether any violations of the federal securities laws have occurred. We are cooperating with the SEC.” Marathon previously received a preliminary subpoena from the SEC in November 2021.（Bloomberg）
7.
Hut 8, a crypto miner, reported revenue of $14.16 million in the first quarter, which is a 64 percent decrease from the previous year and a 13 percent decrease sequentially. The company mined 475 bitcoins, but only sold 425 bitcoins, which is a 50 percent decrease from the previous year. This was due to a forced shutdown of some machine providers because of an energy dispute and increased difficulty with the bitcoin network.
8.
HIVE Blockchain announced its updated growth target to 6EH/s”. HIVE’s near-term target is 4 EH/s. In addition, Hive announced an ATM financing with two large Canadian independent broker-dealers, Stifel and Canaccord. Pursuant to the Equity Distribution Agreement, the Company may, from time to time, sell up to $100 million of Common Shares (the “ATM Equity Program”).
9.
Whinstone US, a unit of bitcoin mining firm Riot Platforms (RIOT), is suing another miner — Rhodium Enterprises — alleging it is owed $26 million in hosting fees and asking a local court to declare that it doesn’t owe any credits related to demand response programs to the defendant.
Riot claims that Rhodium “deliberately miscalculated” how much in hosting fees it had to pay for Riot’s hosting services. The two were supposed to share the net revenue from Rhodium’s mining at the Whinstone facilities, said the lawsuit, which further alleged that the Rhodium entities short-changed Whinstone for $26 million from 2021 to the first quarter of 2023. (CoinDesk)
10.
Following a near 5-year high of 683.36 BTC (~$19.08 million) in BTC mining fee revenue on May 8, BTC mining fee revenue alone has exceeded 2253.29 BTC (~$62.9 million) so far in May. At the same time, the bitcoin commission rate also hit its highest record in the past six years, with the commission rate indicator soaring to 31% on May 7.
11.
Japanese company Toku closed a $20M funding round with investments from Filecoin Foundation, Blockchain Capital, Gitcoin, Gnosis, PleasrDAO and others, specializing in solutions for tax compliance, decentralized employment, token grants and payroll in the crypto ecosystem.
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