| From: The Ox | 2/11/2021 1:56:43 PM | | | | | | finance.yahoo.com
Riot Blockchain, Inc.
Thu, February 11, 2021, 7:45 AM
Castle Rock, CO, Feb. 11, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Riot Blockchain, Inc. (NASDAQ: RIOT) ("Riot”, “Riot Blockchain” or the “Company"), one of the few NASDAQ-listed bitcoin mining companies in the United States, announced that it will achieve an estimated hash rate capacity of 1.06 Exahash per second (“EH/s”) with the deployment of the newly received 2,002 S19 Pro Antminers.
“Exceeding 1 EH/s in hash rate capacity marks a major milestone for the Company,” said Jason Les, CEO of Riot. “While we are proud of this accomplishment, we view it as the successful completion of just one of many steps of our ongoing growth plan. Riot continues to receive and deploy next-generation miners from Bitmain and remains on schedule to more than triple our currently deployed capacity by the fourth quarter of 2021.”
The 2,002 S19 Pro Antminers were received in connection with the purchase order from Bitmain as previously disclosed in August 2020, with installation expected to be completed over the next week. With the deployment of these 2,002 S19 Pro Antminers, Riot will have a total of 11,542 Antminers in operation. Riot’s hash rate capacity will reach an estimated 1.06 EH/s, representing a nearly 26% increase over its prior operational hash rate capacity upon installation of the new miners.
Riot has an additional 26,100 S19 Pro and S19j Antminers on order with Bitmain, which are scheduled for shipment each month through October 2021. Once fully deployed, the Company estimates it will have a total of 37,642 Bitmain Antminers in operation with an estimated aggregate bitcoin mining hash rate capacity of 3.8 EH/s. Based on recent shipments, Riot anticipates continued timely shipments in accordance with the Bitmain purchase orders. |
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| From: Zen Dollar Round | 2/11/2021 10:28:58 PM | | | | | | | Just posted about RIOT in Trader J's thread. I think it's a good way to invest in cryptocurrencies without having to buy them directly. |
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| From: Glenn Petersen | 2/15/2021 9:50:44 PM | | | | | | Bitcoin Miners Posted $354M in Revenue Last Week, Breaking Record From 2017
Last week's mining revenue eclipsed the previous record set in mid December 2017.
Weekly bitcoin mining revenue estimates since 2017
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Zack Voell
CoinDesk
Feb 15, 2021 at 7:44 a.m. CST
Bitcoin miners set a new record for weekly revenue after bringing in $354.4 million last week.
-- Mining revenue growth was helped by the leading cryptocurrency's performance last week following a string of positive developments, culminating in bitcoin (BTC, +3.26%) hitting new record highs over the weekend just below $50,000.
-- "Despite decreasing block reward, mining revenue on a USD basis has trended upwards," said Ethan Vera, co-founder of Seattle-based mining company Luxor Technology, in a direct message with CoinDesk. "This is encouraging for the long term prospects of Bitcoin’s security and continued investments over the next few halving."
-- Weekly revenue eclipsed the previous record of $340 million set in mid-December 2017 near the peak of bitcoin's prior bullish market cycle. CoinDesk revenue estimates based on network fees and block subsidy data from Coin Metrics assume miners sell their bitcoins immediately.
-- Over 15% of the week's revenue was from network fees, continuing a trend of strong growth in fee-based revenue from May 2020, per CoinDesk's prior reporting.
-- "Our miners are incredibly bullish on the future of mining," Vera told CoinDesk. "January and February 2021 have been record months for most of them, and they are taking all of their profits and reinvesting it back into their business to grow future hashrate."
Weekly bitcoin mining revenue estimates since 2017
Source: Coin Metrics, CoinDesk Research
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| From: Julius Wong | 2/18/2021 8:07:53 PM | | | | | | Riot Blockchain: Riding The Bitcoin Wave
Feb. 18, 2021 6:35 PM ETRiot Blockchain, Inc. (RIOT)4 Comments4 Likes
Summary
* Riot Blockchain, Inc. is up over 3 times what it was trading at on January 27.
* Its share price is starting to look frothy - may be time to take some profits off the table.
* The recent news that it has boosted hash rate will offer support in the long term.
* In the short term, the price of bitcoin and technicals will continue to drive its performance.
* The next couple of earnings reports should be positive catalysts for RIOT.
seekingalpha.com |
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| From: Glenn Petersen | 3/21/2021 4:49:49 PM | | | | | | The risky bitcoin buy that’s in a bigger bull market than the cryptocurrency itself
PUBLISHED SUN, MAR 21 202112:42 PM EDT
UPDATED SUN, MAR 21 20211:46 PM EDT
Eric Rosenbaum @ERPROSE
CNBC.com
KEY POINTS
-- Bitcoin mining stocks have generated returns far greater than the bitcoin cryptocurrency in the digital asset’s recent bull market, according to an analysis from Fundstrat Global Advisors.
-- That makes them worth investor attention, but these miners are risky and should be expected to fall more than bitcoin in a digital currency crash.
-- Bitcoin is likely to be a better long-term bet even if the top mining companies have economies of scale established, and for most investors so will any bitcoin ETF approved by the SEC.
All commodities markets have their levered investment bets. Crude oil has wildcat exploration and production companies; gold and precious metals have the mining operations out doing the dirty work in the ground. A commodity of the future, bitcoin, is no exception to the rule that when there’s a scarce resource to exploit in the world, and investors are placing increasing value on it, miners will rush in to stake their claim to the riches.
Recent gains in what may be the most high-risk bitcoin bet of all led Leeor Shimron, vice president of digital asset strategy at Fundstrat Global Advisors, to take a look at the “digital gold rush” in trading of bitcoin miners.
These mining companies are fairly new and young, they lack track records, and some came to market in “roundabout ways” — and some of the biggest, like Riot Blockchain, attracted regulatory scrutiny in their early days. They also have been operating at losses, but Shimon noted they have reached over $1 billion in market cap after investing heavily during the bitcoin downturn in the hardware and facilities that helped them to “strike it big” in the current bitcoin bull market cycle.
High-beta, high-risk bitcoin trading
Shimron described the miners in a note last week to clients who expressed interest in the surging stocks as a “high beta play” on bitcoin. During the recent bull run for the cryptocurrency, during which bitcoin is up 900%, the average return among the biggest publicly traded miners was 5,000%, according to his analysis.
Bitcoin miners, in Shimron’s words, form the core backbone of bitcoin’s blockchain, as they “burn electricity to computer-generate guesses aiming to solve cryptographic puzzles” and generate revenue in the form of mined bitcoin. As the bitcoin is mined, the miners sell the assets to cover their expenses. Many choose to also hold a portion of their mined bitcoin on their corporate balance sheet, a trend which is starting to gain traction with the more digitally-oriented, disruptive CEO class in the broader market, such as Jack Dorsey at Square and Elon Musk at Tesla. Musk just added “Technoking” to his executive title and the Tesla CFO recently had “Master of Coin” added to his. The North American mining company, Marathon Digital Holdings, recently announced it had purchased an additional $150 million worth of bitcoin to hold on its balance sheet.
The largest publicly listed mining companies which the Fundstrat analyst reviewed include the two Nasdaq-listed companies, Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital Holdings, and two over-the-counter market stocks, Hive Blockchain and Hut 8.
Over the past year, bitcoin miners greatly outperformed bitcoin, a dynamic that Fundstrat Global Advisors says will continue as the bull market plays out, but could turn violently to the downside in any correction.
Fundstrat Global Advisors
Shimron’s analysis shows that the beta these bitcoin mining companies exhibit generates a return of 2.5% for every 1% move in the cryptocurrency. While there is not enough historical data to draw firm conclusions, the miners’ performance is clearly tied to the price of bitcoin, and their trading profile amplifies the upside and downside, he said.
It is a “notoriously competitive industry,” in Shimron’s words, where the ability to be profitable can come down to cheap electricity and access to specialized mining hardware. As bitcoin’s price increases, “miners spin up new rigs or upgrade their hardware with more powerful and efficient machines.”
Marathon recently made a $170 million deal for 70,000 S-19 ASIC miners from Bitmain, which when fully deployed later this year, will up its mining power to 103,000 machines.
This high cost of doing business in bitcoin mining results in low or negative free cash flow and muted earnings, Shimron writes. But the mining companies have for the moment captured the growth of the current bitcoin bull cycle as a result of their spending. (They saw wild trading in the bitcoin boom of 2017, too.)
Now they have also attracted attention from some of the market’s newest forces, as a recent Bloomberg piece noted of the bitcoin miners getting discussed within the WallStreetBets message board on Reddit which fueled the mania in shares of GameStop.
“For investors looking to gain exposure to miners, that beta makes it a great opportunity during the middle of a roaring bull market. ...There are fits and starts and pullbacks, but we still have lots of room to grow here,” Shimron said in an interview with CNBC.
Investing in bitcoin in 2021, and beyond
It is the broader bull market in cryptocurrency that has fueled the miners and Shimon thinks that can continue in 2021, driven by macroeconomic and demographic factors. Fears of inflation will support bitcoin prices, and even amid recent yield pressure from the 10-year Treasury which can act on cryptocurrency as it does on technology stocks, he said it is clear from Fed signalling that the central bank wants to keep its dovish policies in place until 2023.
Another driving force is continued adoption of new digital technology and digital assets from younger investors. “You see younger people gravitate to bitcoin and other digital currencies as opposed to gold and commodities and it speaks to a demographic shift. ... To them it’s not crazy to interact with money in a purely digital way,” he told CNBC.
Last week, Morgan Stanley became the first big Wall Street bank to offer its wealthy clients access to bitcoin. It limited access to clients with at least $2 million given the risks involved.
There already are ways into the crypto market other than the underlying currencies, such as the exchanges which trade coin and soon will be available to more investors. Coinbase was recently valued at $68 billion in the private market and is planning a direct listing on the Nasdaq.
Waiting for a bitcoin ETF in the US
There are three bitcoin ETFs in Canada, and at some point, there may be a bitcoin ETF available in the U.S. The latest attempt at the Securities and Exchange Commission was filed mid-March by VanEck ETFs, but with investors not holding out high hopes the SEC will approve a bitcoin fund soon, they are looking elsewhere for cryptocurrency investment ideas that go beyond buying bitcoin itself.
Shimon, who ran an early-stage cryptocurrency and blockchain venture fund before joining Fundstrat, said he does view the miners as being a foundation for the crypto space. “The top companies will be here to stay,” he said, pointing to the economies of scale investing in equipment which newer entrants will have a tougher time competing against.
After making the “smart move” during the bitcoin bear market to build out operations, current tech sector supply chain shortages caused by Covid may further help the positioning of these miners after the capital they have already put into specialized machines for the space.
Still, like many traders and hedge funds do with gold miners and small-cap oil explorers, he is inclined to trade the bitcoin miners in a bull market run, rather than see them as investments to hold for the long-term.
The outperformance of the SPDR Gold Shares ETF relative to a VanEck ETF tracking an index of gold miners, since 2006.
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Shimron continues to prefer bitcoin as a long-term investment, as well as any ETF ultimately approved by the SEC for U.S. investors. “It is just a matter of time before the SEC approves a bitcoin ETF,” he said. “When a BTC ETF comes, the fees will be low and it will be the safest and easiest way of using traditional rails to get exposure to bitcoin,” he said.
The miners have faced criticism over the huge amounts of electricity required in bitcoin operations, but Shimron’s view comes down to the financials and market performance. (He says there is plenty to criticize about the fiat currency system’s impact on the world, too.)
“It is pretty clear the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency is on its last legs, not disappearing any time soon, but we are in the later stages of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency, and decentralized is the next stage.”
Even if the bitcoin mining stocks are too high risk for most investors, he is confident in saying that the world of cryptocurrency should be on everyone’s radar. “This is where everything is going. Finance has been the last vestige that hasn’t been touched by the internet,” Shimron said.
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| To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (8) | 4/7/2021 11:56:47 AM | | From: Glenn Petersen | | | | Riot Blockchain to spend $138.5 million on bitcoin mining hardware, with shipments scheduled through October 2022
by Wolfie Zhao
The Block
April 7, 2021, 11:10AM EDT · 1 min read
Nasdaq-listed bitcoin mining firm Riot Blockchain has placed an order to buy bitcoin miners worth $138.5 million that will ship through October 2022.
The firm said in a statement on Wednesday that it is buying 42,000 units of Bitmain's AntMiner S19j at a cost of $3,300 per set, which means Riot is preordering the future batches at $36 per terahashes per second (TH/s) of computing power. The standard hash rate of an AntMiner S19j is 90 TH/s.
The Block reported last week that spot stock prices for the newest generation of bitcoin mining equipment, such as Bitmain's S19 series, are as high as $120 per TH/s, constituting a five-fold premium compared to their preorder prices months ago.
While Riot's cost for the new orders appears to be considerably cheap compared to those spot prices, the delivery of the new batches will not start until later this year.
Riot said it is poised to receive a minimum of 3,500 units of S19j AntMiners on a monthly basis starting in November, with shipments continuing through October 2022.
At the full deployment, the firm said it is estimated to have 7.7 million TH/s of computing power, or about 4.6% of the network's current total.
Bitcoin's surging prices and the ongoing global chip shortage have significantly driven up the cost of bitcoin mining equipment.
Indeed, Riot inked a deal with Bitmain in August 2020 to invest $17.7 million in 8,000 units of the manufacturer's AntMiner S19 Pro, which were scheduled to be fully delivered by this month.
The standard hash rate of an AntMiner S19 Pro is at 110 TH/s, which means Riot is now paying 50% more for a mining model that is less advanced than the ones it bought last year.
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| From: The Ox | 4/19/2021 9:28:09 AM | | | | | | coingeek.com
Riot Blockchain buys Texas data center for $650M from rival Northern Data
TECH 18 APRIL 2021
Steve Kaaru 
Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ: RIOT) has announced that it’s set to purchase the largest BTC block reward mining center in the United States. It will now reportedly become the largest publicly-traded blockchain mining company globally.
Riot revealed in a press release that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Whinstone U.S Inc. from its rival Northern Data AG. It will pay $80 million in cash and $571 million in its common stock, equaling a total transaction value of $651 million. |
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