Riot Blockchain, a listed Nasdaq public cryptocurrency mining company, announced late yesterday that it had produced 108 new Bitcoins in April. The Company’s production announcement comes before the new 1,000 Bitmain Antminer S19s arrive and are operational.
The Company said for April 2020, 108 newly mined Bitcoins (BTC) were produced by the Bitmain S17s being fully deployed for the entire month of April 2020. Riot noted, “BTC inventory increased by 13% since March 31, 2020, to 929 BTC as of April 30, 2020.”
Riot states it is currently operating approximately 4,000 S17s with an aggregate hashing power capacity of 248 Petahash per second (“PH/s”) between their Oklahoma City facility and the Coinmint Massena, New York locations.
The recent purchase of the next-generation Bitmain S19s was for $2.4 million and is expected to increase mining efficiency and drive down power consumption. Bitcoin is not free and mining the currency uses an increasing amount of electrical power to solve a mathematical puzzle. Once solved, a new puzzle is generated with ever-increasing complexity. The harder the problem, the more power miners use to solve it. Some environmental experts have said that the hungry energy process is wasteful.
The Company is based in Colorado but has positioned part of its Bitcoin mining operation in Massena, New York. Riot stated that the 300 miners were transported and operational in their Upstate New York location this April.
Ashton Soniat, CEO of Coinmint stated, “Coinmint has expanded our co-hosting services to meet the needs of first-in-class cryptocurrency mining companies and we are excited to partner with Riot Blockchain. With the upcoming halving, Coinmint’s low-cost electricity and 120MW of capacity will allow Riot to continue to grow operations even as bitcoin rewards are reduced.”
Previously in April, Riot Blockchain announced that it executed a co-location mining services contract with Coinmint, an operator of one of the largest digital currency data centers in North America.
Riot is continuing to monitor COVID-19’s impact on its production and expects any affect to be minimal.
