In an effort to boost its Bitcoin mining operations, publicly traded Bitcoin mining company Cipher Mining (CIFR) has announced a significant acquisition of cryptocurrency mining devices. The company will acquire 37,396 units of Antminer T21 miners from Bitmain, one of the largest cryptocurrency mining companies in the industry.
The deal, disclosed Dec. 18, calls for the newly acquired mining equipment to provide Cipher with 7.1 exahash per second (EH/s) of self-mining capacity by the first half of 2025.
As part of the acquisition, Cipher CEO Tyler Page stated the strategic importance of this purchase. He noted that this will allow the company to establish its initial capacity of 135 megawatts (MW) at the recently acquired Black Pearl site. Cipher also recently secured an option to acquire an additional 45,706 miners, which will represent an additional 8.7 EH/s by 2024.
The acquisition also allows Cipher to lock in pricing for mining rigs at the rate of $14 per terahash (TH). Page pointed out that this will become increasingly important as the cryptocurrency market enters a bull run:
“We are controlling our largest potential capital expenditure and locking in favorable conditions ahead of what we believe will be a bull market for Bitcoin.”
Cipher is a subsidiary of Bitfury, a major cryptocurrency mining company that has 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 entered into a $7 million purchase agreement for a new site in Texas. The agreement was settled in ordinary shares, newly issued at the time.
This site’s planned operational start-up in 2025 is expected to have 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 expansion comes after it went public as a publicly traded entity, a change that followed a $2 billion merger deal with 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.