Australia-based Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Iris Energy has announced that it will nearly triple its mining capacity with the addition of thousands of mining rigs.
On February 13, the firm said it bought an additional 4.4 Exa Hashes per second (EH/s) worth of Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro ASIC miner, bringing the self-mining capacity to 5.5 EH/s from 2.0 EH/s.
Based on S19j Pro’s maximum hashrate of 100 Tera Hashes per second (TH/s), the purchase adds approximately 44,000 miners to its fleet, according to Cointelegraph calculations.
Daniel Roberts, co-founder and o-CEO of Iris said the purchase “is an important milestone” for the company and added that it is “a challenging period for the industry and the market more generally.”
Iris said the new miners will be installed at the company’s headquarters, but did not say which location. The company operates three facilities in various locations in British Columbia, Canada and one in Texas in the United States.
The company used $67 million left over from a prepayment to ASIC miner manufacturer Bitmain to finance the purchase of the rig “at no additional cash cost.”
Iris has a 10 EH/s contract with Bitmain which they say is “finished, with no remaining commitments.” He stated that he remains debt free.
The company said it is also considering the option to sell surplus miners above 5.5 EH/s of mining capacity to reinvest funds.
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In November last year, the company was forced to remove a miner used as collateral for a $107.8 million loan because the unit generated “insufficient cash flow to meet debt financing obligations.”
Over the past few months, cryptocurrency miners have faced pressure from multiple directions, having to contend with low Bitcoin prices amid high hash rates, high mining difficulty and high energy prices.
The pressure caused the publicly listed Bitcoin mining company to sell almost all of the BTC mined throughout 2022 with data from blockchain research firm Messari showing Iris sold around 100% of the nearly 2,500 BTC mined that year.
February analysis of the Hashrate Index shows publicly listed miners increased production in January as better weather and stable electricity prices helped boost production. Iris’ January production yielded 172 BTC compared to December’s 123 BTC.