Australia-based Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Iris Energy has revealed that it will nearly triple its mining capacity with the addition of thousands of mining rigs.
On February 13 the signature saying purchased an additional 4.4 Exa Hashes per second (EH/s) worth of Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro ASIC miners, bringing its auto-mining capacity to 5.5 EH/s from 2.0 EH/s.
Based on the S19j Pro’s maximum hashrate of 100 Tera Hashes per second (TH/s), the purchase adds roughly 44,000 miners to its fleet, according to Cointelegraph’s calculations.
Daniel Roberts, co-founder and co-CEO of Iris, said the purchase “is an important milestone” for the company, adding that it has been a “challenging period for both the industry and the markets in general.”
Iris said the new miners will be installed at company hubs, but did not mention which locations. The firm operates three facilities at various locations in British Columbia, Canada, and one in Texas, in the United States.
The company used $67 million of remaining prepayments to ASIC miner maker Bitmain to finance the purchase of the rigs “without any additional cash outlay.”
Iris had a 10 EH/s contract with Bitmain that she says “has been fully resolved, with no remaining commitments.” She claimed that she remains debt free.
The firm said it is also considering options to sell excess miners above its 5.5 EH/s mining capacity for reinvestment.
Related: Core Scientific to deliver 27,000 rigs to pay off $38 million in debt
In November of last year, the company was forced to pull the plug on miners used as collateral for a $107.8 million loan, as the units produced “insufficient cash flow to meet their respective funding obligations for Debt”.
In recent months, cryptocurrency miners have faced pressure from multiple directions, having to contend with low Bitcoin prices amid high hash rates, high mining difficulty, and high energy prices.
The pressure caused publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies to sell almost all of the BTC mined throughout 2022 with data from blockchain research firm Messari showing that Iris sold around 100% of the nearly 2,500 BTC it mined. this year.
A February analysis by Hashrate Index shows that publicly traded miners increased their production in January with better weather and stable electricity prices helping production rise. Iris’s January output came in at 172 BTC compared to December’s 123 BTC.
