With a $240 million investment in upgrading its Bitcoin mining equipment, Bitfarms expects to maintain profitability after the Bitcoin halving in 2024. As per reports, the company plans to purchase 88,000 high-efficiency Bitcoin mining machines. Performance and profitability are at the forefront of Bitfarms’ preparations for the Bitcoin halving. Whereas other mining companies are finding ways to utilize wasted energy for the same process.
Bitfarm’s BTC earnings soar
Previously, Bitfarms had purchased 35,888 Bitcoin Miner T21s from Bitmain. Additional efforts include exercising a purchase option for 28,000 T21 miners and purchasing 19,280 Bitmain T21 miners, 3,888 Bitmain S21 miners, and 740 Bitmain S21 hydro miners.
With an operating hash rate of 6.5 exahashes per second (EH/s), Bitfarms earned 286 BTC in March 2024, as per reports. Whereas on the other hand, in March 2023, the firm mined 424 BTC with 4.8 EH/s, proving that hash rate capacity is important for Bitcoin mining profitability.
Since Bitfarms is still growing its mining fleet, it sold almost all the Bitcoin it mined in the past two months. In an explanation of the fleet upgrade, Lucas stated, “The transformational fleet upgrade propels Bitfarms in scale and profitability amid the Bitcoin halving. This is a game changer that triples our hash rate to 21 EH/s, increases our targeted operating capacity by 83% to 440 megawatts (MW), and improves fleet efficiency by 40% to 21 w/TH.”
As of March 31, Bitfarms had $123 million in liquid assets including $66 million in cash and 806 Bitcoins in its treasury worth $56.7 million at a BTC price of $70,400.
“The success of our upgrade program rests on our proven ability to utilize our operational expertise to achieve industry-leading performance and profitability,” Lucas concluded.
Bitcoin mining using wasted energy
Bitcoin miner Giga Energy, based in Texas, recently expanded its operations into Argentina. They plan to utilize wasted energy from “natural gas flaring” in the South American nation’s oil fields.
The process of burning natural gas associated with oil extraction is called gas flaring. Methane is released during the process, which Giga converts into electricity to power its Bitcoin mining rigs. It was reported in November 2023 that Marathon Digital was mining bitcoins with power generated from landfill methane. The 280-kW off-grid pilot project operated in Utah.
The project was a partnership between Marathon and Nodal Power. In November 2022, Nodal Power started generating energy from landfill gas in the southeastern U.S. and Texas. It raised $13 million in a seed round in August to operate two sites, one of which was a data center.
As of now, the firm doesn’t expect to turn a profit since all necessary equipment needs to be imported before it can start mining in the area.
