Canadian crypto mining firm Hut 8 (HUT) had 5,518 bitcoin (approximately $256 million at current prices) in its reserves on Dec. 31, 2021, according to a Wednesday press release.
Nasdaq-listed Hut 8 follows a “hodl” strategy, meaning it keeps all of the bitcoin it mines in its custody, essentially betting that their value will increase in the long term. The reserves represent a 97% increase compared to the end of 2020, the press release said.
Hut 8?s rate of bitcoin production was up slightly from an average of 8.83 BTC mined per day in November 2021 to 8.9 mined per day in December, according to the statement.
Hut 8?s total installed operating capacity stood at 2 exahash/second (EH/s) at the end of 2021, up 125% year-over-year, the company said. This represents 1.16% of the bitcoin network’s total hashrate, a measure of computing power on the network, as of Wednesday, according to data from CoinWarz.
Hut 8 plans to increase its installed capacity to 3.35 EH/s by the end of Q1 2022, across its three sites in Canada. To do this, the miner added new machines to two existing sites in December, and is building out a third mining farm.
In December, Hut 8 added 228 petahash/second (PH/s) of hashrate by buying 2,505 MicroBT M30S mining rigs from Foundry Digital, the statement said. These machines were already installed in Hut 8’s site in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Crypto mining and staking firm Foundry is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which is also CoinDesk’s parent company.
Hut 8 is updating the electricity infrastructure at its Medicine Hat mining farm so that it can optimize the hashrate as new MicroBT mining machines are delivered, it said. These upgrades are “on track” to add another 450 PH/s of computing power in February 2022, the company said.
Also in December, Hut 8 installed 2,782 new MicroBT M30S and M31S+ machines in its site in Drumheller, Alberta, according to the press release.
Hut 8?s third mining site in North Bay, Ontario, is set to be fully operational by the end of Q1, the press release said. At full capacity, this site will add another 850 PH/s of hashrate at 35 megawatts.
On Dec. 30, 2021, the Canadian miner agreed to take on a $30 million equipment financing loan at 9.5% interest rate from Trinity Capital. The loan, repayable over a three-year term, is collateralized by “certain new MicroBT machines being installed” at Hut 8?s Medicine Hut and North Bay sites, according to the press release.
CORRECTION (Jan. 5, 14:31 UTC): A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the current worth of Hut 8?s bitcoin reserves was $220 million.
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