Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream has announced a $25 million purchase of the latest Whatsminer bitcoin mining rigs from MicroBT to be run across Blockstream Mining’s facilities in North America.
Blockstream Mining was launched in 2019 with an intention of bringing more of the global hash rate to the West. The largest mining rig manufacturers and mining pools are headquartered in China, which some see as a dangerous geographic centralization of Bitcoin’s most critical industry. Today, Blockstream Mining offers colocation services for institutions interested in entering the space, maintaining facilities in Quebec and the State of Georgia.
“The WhatsMiner purchase cements Blockstream Mining’s position as one of the largest Bitcoin mining operations in North America,” Adam Back, the CEO of Blockstream, said in a release shared with Bitcoin Magazine. “With over 300 megawatts in capacity available and fast-growing demand from institutions looking to get involved in the Bitcoin gold rush, we’ll continue to grow aggressively throughout the year.”
According to the release, Blockstream led the testing of the Whatsminer M30S series outside of China, so this large order can be interpreted as a sign of confidence about its performance.
“Right now, there’s no better mining hardware on the market than MicroBT’s Whatsminer miners,” Samson Mow, Blockstream’s chief strategy officer, said in the release. “We’re excited to continue our relationship with MicroBT and this latest batch will provide our hosting clients with an extremely reliable foundation to contribute to the security of the Bitcoin network.”
A rise in the bitcoin price and growth of mining operations around the world has meant that mining rig manufacturers maintain months-long waiting lists for new equipment. But MicroBT’s partnership with financial services firm Foundry Digital means that North American mining groups Compute North and Hut 8 are poised to receive new Whatsminer M30S rigs soon as well.
$11.8 million in financing allowed Hut 8 to purchase 5,400 new Whatsminer M30S rigs, adding 475 petahashes per second to its mining capacity. It would stand to reason that Blocksteram’s $25 million purchase would yield it more than twice that, but the release did not include specifics about the number of rigs or hash rate increase it is expecting.
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