Energy is one of the biggest expenses incurred by cryptocurrency miners. In fact, according to Bitcoin.com, "the gigawatts of electrical consumption powering industrial bitcoin mining today consumes as much as seven nuclear power plants." Or, as Microgrid Knowledge has reported, "It takes the energy of nearly 15 households to produce just one Bitcoin. Not surprisingly, the rapidly increasing amounts of energy being consumed by Bitcoin and cryptocurrency “miners” – operations that create new cryptocurrency by competing to process new transaction blocks – has been making headlines of late amid wild gyrations and soaring exchange prices." However, microgrids can help bring down that overall cost, and, in the process, allow companies to create far more Bitcoins. According to Matthew Schultz, CleanSpark’s Executive Chairman, “The Company expects to demonstrate that by utilizing our technologies, we can reduce the cost of energy to below $0.0285 per kw/h.” With this news, some of the top companies to watch include CleanSpark, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLSK), PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL), Square Inc. (NYSE:SQ), Riot Blockchain Inc. (NASDAQ:RIOT), and Marathon Patent Group (NASDAQ:MARA).
CleanSpark, Inc. (NASDAQ:CLSK) BREAKING NEWS: CleanSpark, Inc., an advanced software and controls technology solutions company, focused on solving modern energy challenges, today announced it has completed the acquisition of ATL Data Centers, LLC for $20 million in shares of the Company’s common stock.
This transaction represents the first strategic acquisition as part of a larger growth plan following CleanSpark’s recent $40M institutional investment. ATL Data Center creates a unique business opportunity as a full-scale, profitable demonstration facility for the Company. The property is currently served by two separate utility interconnections with entirely different rate structures that power individual segments of the business. CleanSpark plans to deploy its software technologies and trade secrets to maximize energy savings, expand total power capacity, provide resilient electricity, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Company anticipates that this will involve the design and installation of multiple microgrids at the facility. Each microgrid would be focused on a specific function, however, the fractal topology of the design will enable them to be interconnected to share power, creating resiliency as well as maximizing total facility efficiency. Since power resiliency directly supports increased profitability in data or processor intensive applications, the Company’s ability to deliver high power reliability is expected to demonstrably increase profitability of each segment of the existing business.
As part of the first phase, the Company has contracted with the local municipality to expand the power to the facility from 20MW to 50MW. It is expected that this expansion will begin promptly and be completed in April 2021. In addition to this initial utility-level expansion, CleanSpark will begin modeling solutions with its proprietary mVSO software and subsequently add renewable energy generating assets and energy storage to the site which will be operated by the Company’s patented mPulse controls. Additionally, the Company intends to more than triple the number of ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) mining units in operation during the initial expansion.
As the new policies of FERC 2222 begin to take effect over the coming year, CleanSpark expects to be uniquely positioned to benefit from the implementation of the regulation using its GridFabric applications and other technologies to maximize market opportunities. Ultimately, it is envisioned that the facility will feature a real-time web-based view of power and dollar savings generated by CleanSpark’s technology, offering clients a unique opportunity to see demonstrated savings in a real-world, power-intensive application. This data will allow clients to make microgrid investments with more reliable information.
Zachary Bradford, CleanSpark’s CEO said, “As part of our strategic acquisition initiative, we identified energy-intensive companies facing the greatest amount of exposure to high power costs and resiliency risk. Our prior experience in the digital currency mining industry provided the insight into how proper energy management was crucial to successful and profitable mining operations. In 2018, CleanSpark’s energy professionals were tasked to design and engineer a microgrid solution for a ‘stand-alone’ mobile bitcoin mining system. As part of the ATL complex we now have 23 such mobile mining rigs in addition to the main facility. This acquisition enables us to take our prior designs and expand upon them at a much greater scale. We believe today’s transaction allows us to obtain a significant and rapid return on our investment while further validating our energy technologies. We began early-stage analysis of ATL in February 2020 to evaluate expanding the facility’s energy capacity and reducing energy costs. After an in-depth examination of the profitability under the existing energy structure, it was apparent that it was a perfect fit to deploy the aforementioned strategy.
There are currently 3,471 bitcoin mining units in daily operation on site, processing approximately 190 PH which are using approximately 9.6 MW of capacity. We anticipate that upon completion of the equipment and energy expansion, the facility is expected to produce between .9-1.4 EH/s, depending on the final configuration and ASICs deployed. We expect that this will result in multiple bitcoins being produced daily at some of the lowest energy costs in the nation for this type of enterprise. The Company expects to demonstrate that by utilizing our technologies, we can reduce the cost of energy to below $0.0285 per kw/h. After successfully deploying the systems, we intend to take this model to other sites, many of which have significantly higher energy costs offering potentially greater opportunities for savings.”
Matthew Schultz, CleanSpark’s Executive Chairman commented: “The recent significant investments into Bitcoin by such respected companies as Square, PayPal and MicroStrategy further validated our due diligence conclusions surrounding this acquisition. Interestingly, just this week, Square’s Jack Dorsey announced the intent to deploy $10M to advance ‘green energy’ within the Bitcoin mining industry. This transaction should immediately position us as one of the largest publicly-traded Bitcoin producers in the country. We will certainly be the only microgrid company that owns and controls the distributed energy supply to its own mining activities, in furtherance of developing our best-in-class technologies.”
Other related developments from around the markets include:
PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) announced that it processed a record-breaking $185 million globally this GivingTuesday, the largest amount raised on the platform for the global day of giving since its inception in 2012. With a 40 percent increase in donations processed over 2019, more than 1.75 million PayPal customers across 198 markets donated to causes they care about, amounting to over two million donations in total. With the giving season underway, more than half of charitable organizations in the U.S. expect to raise less money than they did in 2019, as a result of the financial strain experienced by people and businesses across the country since the start of the pandemic.1 To help offset this pressure on charities, PayPal has provided its customers with a robust Giving platform, that allows customers to give back throughout the year in a number of ways, from donating with the PayPal Giving Fund to contributing micro-donations or donating with credit card rewards at online retailers that accept PayPal at checkout.
Square Inc. (NYSE:SQ) announced y its plans to become net zero carbon for operations by 2030, including its primary Scope 3 emissions. Square also announced the launch of its Bitcoin Clean Energy Investment Initiative, where it has committed $10 million to support companies that help drive adoption and efficiency of renewables within the bitcoin ecosystem. Square has partnered with Watershed, a company that powers climate programs for leading businesses, to provide ongoing support in measuring and reducing its carbon footprint. Square has mapped out a path towards a net zero carbon target through a combination of lowering its own carbon footprint in conjunction with scaling a verified carbon removal portfolio, which Square intends to launch in the first quarter of 2021.
Riot Blockchain Inc. (NASDAQ:RIOT), one of the few Nasdaq listed public cryptocurrency mining companies in the United States, is pleased to announce that Hubert Marleau has been appointed to the Company's Board of Directors, effective today, to fill the previously announced vacancy. Mr. Marleau, age 76, is a veteran capital markets professional, corporate director, and Chair of the Marleau Lecture Series on Economic and Monetary Policy at the University of Ottawa. Currently, he serves as Chief Economist at Palos Management, a boutique investment management firm headquartered in Montreal, Canada. In addition to a career in the capital markets that has spanned over five decades, Mr. Marleau has previously served as a Governor of the Montreal and Vancouver stock exchanges, and as a Director of the Listing Committee for the Toronto Stock Exchange and Director of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada (now known as IIROC).
Marathon Patent Group Inc. (NASDAQ:MARA), one of the largest enterprise Bitcoin self-mining companies in North America, has entered into a contract with Bitmain to purchase 10,000 Antminer S-19j Pro ASIC Miners. Under the terms of the agreement, Marathon will receive an initial batch of 6,000 S-19j Pro Miners in August 2021. The remaining 4,000 miners will be delivered in September 2021. Once all of Marathon’s purchased miners are delivered and fully deployed, the Company’s mining portfolio will consist of 33,560 state of the art ASIC miners, generating 3.56 EH/s. As a result, the Company will be consuming approximately 100 MWs of power, the maximum amount available at the Company’s data center in Hardin, MT.
Legal Disclaimer / Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this article contains forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Winning Media is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Winning Media is only compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation. Pursuant to an agreement Winning Media has been paid three thousand five hundred dollars for advertising and marketing services for CleanSpark, Inc. by a third party. We own ZERO shares of CleanSpark, Inc. Please click here for full disclaimer.
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