Several major Bitcoin (BTC) miners have announced major expansions in recent months. The next Bitcoin halving is scheduled to take place next April, meaning miners will have to be particularly competitive. Cipher Mining is also joining the trend and announcing an expansion of 60 megawatts (MW) on Wednesday.
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The Bitcoin miner Cipher is also expanding
In a press release, the American company writes that it has purchased 16,700 ASIC mining devices from the Chinese manufacturer Canaan. These are A1466 machines that are intended to increase the capacity of their two mining sites by a total of 2.5 exahash per second (EH/s).
In total, the new machines will consume 60 megawatts. The two locations will each receive 30 MW or 1.25 EH/s. Both locations are joint ventures with Bear LLC and Chief Mountain LLC, respectively, in which Cipher holds 49% each.
The Avalon A1466 miners are expected to ship in the second quarter of 2024. Cipher CEO Tyler Page hopes the expansions will ensure Cipher survives the upcoming Bitcoin halving.
In addition to these two expansions, the company also acquired a mining site from Trinity Mining Group in December. The Black Pearl site has a theoretical capacity of 300 megawatts, making it likely Cipher's largest mining site.
Crypto miners on the rise
In recent months, several miners have announced major expansions. For example, in October, Marathon Digital significantly expanded its locations with more efficient Antminer hardware. Riot Platforms followed in December with its largest expansion ever.
The expansions have brought a lot of additional computing power to the Bitcoin network. Last Christmas Hashrate another record. Miners are trying to be as competitive as possible because if everything goes according to plan after the halving, they will only earn half the BTC when mining a block of transactions. This seems to have caused a lot of hype, because shortly afterwards the shares of listed miners became very popular.
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