Stronghold Digital, a leading Bitcoin mining firm, announced the company has entered into a two-year hosting agreement with Cantaloupe Digital LLC, a subsidiary of the bitcoin application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) manufacturer, Canaan. Under the new partnership, Stronghold Digital plans to activate 2,000 Avalon A1346 miners and 2,000 A1246 models. This will result in a total hashrate capacity of 400 petahash per second (PH/s) by the end of June.
Stronghold Digital’s Hosting Agreement With Canaan Subsidiary Aims to Increase Bitcoin Mining Capabilities
On May 4, 2023, Stronghold Digital Mining, Inc. (Nasdaq: SDIG) announced a two-year hosting deal with Cantaloupe Digital, a subsidiary of Canaan, the manufacturer of Avalon-made ASICs. Starting May 15, Stronghold Digital will install Avalon A1246 mining rigs, each with 90 terahash per second (TH/s) of hashpower.
According to the announcement, the company plans to install 2,000 Avalon A1346 miners in June. Each A1346 miner is expected to have a hashpower of 110 TH/s. Once all the miners are installed, Stronghold anticipates that its delivered hashrate capacity will increase to 3.6 exahash per second (EH/s) by June. This move puts Stronghold in line with other mining companies that are also expanding their fleets in 2023 with additional ASIC rigs.
“While we have emphasized our necessary deleveraging efforts over the last ten months, we think that the most meaningful measure of our work is the capital efficiency of our mining fleet today,” Greg Beard, chairman and chief executive officer of Stronghold said in a statement sent to Bitcoin.com News.
According to Stronghold, the latest move will allow the company to fully utilize the capacity of its Panther Creek data center. As part of the agreement, Stronghold will receive 50% of the bitcoin (BTC) mined by the Canaan Miners. Additionally, Canaan will make payments to Stronghold equal to 55% of the net cost of power at the Panther Creek plant, calculated on a monthly basis in dollar-per-megawatt-hour terms.
The Stronghold news coincides with Blocksbridge Consulting publishing research on April 29, 2023, indicating that the cost of producing Avalon miners has decreased. According to an analysis of Canaan’s annual report, the cost of goods sold (COGS) for each generation of Avalon bitcoin ASICs, from the A7 to A13 series, has dropped from $50 per terahash per second (TH/s) to $12 per TH/s.
Meanwhile, bitcoin miners have had a more successful year in 2023 compared to 2022. The price of bitcoin (BTC) has been higher this year, and despite five consecutive difficulty increases, miners experienced a 1.45% decrease on Thursday.
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