Riot Blockchain anticipates that it will reach a hashrate output of over 2.3 EH/s by June 2021.
The publicly-listed mining company revealed that it has received and deployed roughly 2,500 Antminer S19 Pro rigs that were ordered between April and June. The announcement also details that a purchase agreement has been secured with Bitmain for another 2,500 Antminer S19 Pros with delivery expected in December 2020. The firm also ordered 13,100 rigs in August with delivery expected in the first half of 2021. It is unsurprising that hashrate estimates are close to record highs given the number of large Bitcoin miners who have recently received deliveries of latest-gen rigs. Hut8 recently deployed 2,000 Whatsminer rigs.
Square, Inc. – the company behind Square Crypto and the Cash App – invested roughly $50 million of its treasury holdings into Bitcoin.
This closely follows MicroStrategy’s decision to invest $425 million of cash sitting on their balance sheet into Bitcoin. The investment of $50 million equates to roughly 1% of Square’s total assets. The purchase makes Square the third-largest holder of Bitcoin
among publicly-listed companies. MicroStrategy and Galaxy Digital Holdings are the largest and second-largest BTC holders respectively.
Northern Data releases 2020 H1 Results.
The report is currently only available in German. It leads with the statement that “HPC goes Mainstream”. We have previously shared our opinions on Northern Data’s HPC marketing strategy here
. A press release notes that Northern Data is in the beginning stages of commercialization and reports revenues of €1.5 million in the first half of the year. Forecasts for the second half of the year anticipate revenues of €120 million to €140 million.
Ebang (EBON) releases 2020 H1 Results.
Hardware manufacturer Ebang reports revenues of $11.04 million for the first half of 2020 with a net loss of $6.96 million. CEO Dong Hu commented that the outbreak of COVID-19 had a significant impact on business performance. Although this is likely to be true, all businesses face the difficulties of the pandemic outbreak and Ebang is likely in the weakest position of all hardware manufacturers. Bitmain and MicroBT have led the competition. They have released the most efficient and powerful rigs and have battled for the biggest share of Bitcoin ASIC sales. Canaan have been playing catch up but have recently announced a rig with touted specs that closely match the latest-gen of Bitmain and MicroBT. However, Ebang rugs have been far behind the frontier of innovation. Analyst Matt Yamamoto noted that the COVID-19 outbreak likely impacted to an extent but “
Ebang’s weak product offering was also likely a major contributor”. The team has been looking to enter other markets and the CEO mentioned that preparations are complete to establish a cryptocurrency exchange and online brokerage.
The founders of BitMEX – a leading crypto derivatives exchange was established around 2014 – are being targeted heavily by US authorities.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Department of Justice is charging the exchange for violating various regulations. The violation is mainly based on BitMEX failing to comply with AML and KYC regulations for US customers. The exchange served US customers initially but quickly started blocking IP addresses from the US as they assess the risks as too high. One of the founders, Samuel Reed, was arrested in Boston. Over 50k BTC flowed out of BitMEX on October 2nd as account holders responded to the charges facing the founders.
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