Crypto Miner Hive Blockchain Targets 6 EH/s of Computing Power Funded by Up to $100M Share Sale
The miner will sell its common shares under an at-the-market (ATM) offering, with investment firms Canaccord Genuity and Stifel acting as agents.
May 12, 2023 at 7:05 a.m. UTC
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Hive Blockchain (HIVE) revealed a plan to roughly double its computing power, or hashrate, to 6 exahash/second (EH/s), in a press release on Friday.
The miner will fund its growth target through an at-the-market (ATM) sale but did not specify a timeline for the target. Hive said it will increase its hashrate from about 3 EH/s to 4 EH/s by the end of the second quarter with machines it has already purchased.
Asked about the timeline for the goal, CEO Aydin Kilic said that Hive will provide more details "throughout the year." The firm has focused on procuring mining rigs with the best possible return on investment, he added.
As the crypto winter that saw many miners struggle, with some filling for bankruptcy, thaws, the industry is setting its eyes on new growth and operational targets.
The miner will sell up to $100 million common shares under its ATM offering, with Canadian investment firms Canaccord Genuity and Stifel acting as agents. Each exahash of bitcoin (BTC) mining computing power will cost $30 million, so the offering could fund up to 3 EH/s of growth.
The Canadian miner also said it has purchased 1.26 EH/s of new generation machines. That includes 0.71 EH/s of Bitmain Antminer models while the rest is made up of Hive's custom rigs made with Intel (INTC) semiconductors. Intel discontinued the mining chip series in April.
The firm emphasized the power efficiency and purchase price of its mining rig fleet that will hopefully "optimize near-term repayment of our investments from cashflow operating these machines," said the press release.
Hive mines both bitcoin and other crypto tokens using graphics-processing units that it repurposed from ether (ETH) mining after the Merge. As of the end of April, its hashrate was made up of 3.14 EH/s of bitcoin computing power and 0.16 EH/s of GPU mining.
UPDATE (May 12, 16:05): Adds CEO comments in third paragraph.
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Eliza Gkritsi is a CoinDesk contributor focused on the intersection of crypto and AI.