According to recent media reports, several Bitcoin mining firms continue to expand and in doing so, increase their production numbers in spite of an increase in difficulty and a 44% decrease in profitability over the past year.
Last week, CleanSpark, a U.S.-based mining firm shared the news that it had acquired 12.5K new Antminer mining rigs at a cost of just over $40 million. Broken down, the purchase equates to $23 TH/s, a price that is below the market average.
On June 1st, Bitcoin mining difficulty climbed to a new record high, exceeding 50 trillion and adding additional pressure to BTC miners. The network’s hash rate has also been on the rise, climbing to 395 EH/s and nearly reaching its record high last week.
According to the purchase agreement inked by CleanSpark, 6K of the mining rigs purchased are slated to be shipped out by the manufacturer sometime later this month, with the remainder following in August.
The Antminer S19 XP mining rigs that the company ordered have an associated hash rate of 141 TH/s. In total, the purchase will provide CleanSpark with another 1.76 EH/s to add to the 6.7 EH/s that it already boasts.
CleanSpark CEO Zach Bradford had the following to say about the acquisition:
“This purchase ensures that we are prepared to meet and potentially exceed our year-end target of 16 EH/s.”
The firm’s existing mining farms are located in the United States, in the southern state of Georgia. According to the CleanSpark website, the company currently has 67,700 operational mining devices and has already mined 2,395 Bitcoin this year.
CleanSpark is one of several mining firms that have continued with plans for expansion despite it growing tougher to profit from Bitcoin mining. Mining profitability has fallen to $0.071 per terahash per second per day, a number that represents a 44% decline over the last year and an 82% decline since the market reached its peak in the latter half of 2021.
As part of its previous major purchase agreements, CleanSpark acquired 20K new Antminer S19j Pro+ model rigs in February and then in April added 45K S19 XP model rigs to its supply.
In other mining news, Bitfarm has revealed that it mined a total of 459 Bitcoin last month, a production increase of 6.5% on the year. Ben Gagnon, the company’s Chief Mining Officer said the following about the results:
“A 47% year-over-year increase in our hash rate was offset by a 65% increase in network difficulty in the same period.”
Meanwhile, Cipher Mining has announced that it mined 493 Bitcoin last month, crediting the increase in profits to the spiking transaction fees linked to the extreme popularity of Ordinals and BRC-20 memecoin minting.
On the last day of May, Compass Mining reached an agreement with hosting services supplier Arthur Mining for the construction of a brand-new mining facility in the U.S. state of Ohio.