HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:HIVE) is pleased to announce the production figures from the Company's global Bitcoin operations for the month of February 2023, with 250 Bitcoin produced in February, and a current BTC HODL balance of approximately 2,340 Bitcoin mined utilizing computational power sourced from green energy. The Company notes it reached over 3 Exahash (EH) of Bitcoin mining capacity in February (all amounts in US dollars, unless otherwise indicated).
Summary Overview:
- HIVE produced 250 Bitcoin in the month of February, from ASIC and GPU mining operations, representing an average of 91 Bitcoin Per EH, with an average hashrate of 2.75 EH/s for the month of February 2023;
- HIVE reached its 3 EH/s target in late February by mining at full capacity of 3,080 PH/s in late February. HIVE ended the month with 2.81 EH/s of mining capacity;
- HIVE has installed over 4,200 BuzzMiners to date. HIVE has received over 5,600 Buzzminers in its data centers and continues to install them to increase overall hashrate;
- HIVE expects to receive an additional 645 BuzzMiners in the next 2 months, representing a total production quantity of 6,300 BuzzMiners powered by the Intel Blockscale ASIC for the initial production run. HIVE is the first company in the world to commercially deploy thousands of its own Bitcoin ASIC miners powered by the Intel Blockscale ASIC.
February 2023 Production Figures
Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of HIVE, stated, "We are very happy to have produced 250 Bitcoin during the month. Our team has focused on profitability, with 25% gross mining margins in our recent fiscal quarter for the 3 months ending December 31, 2022. We seek to optimize our profit from gross mining margins, on a monthly basis, by optimizing the efficiency of our operating fleet, and strategically curtailing or grid balancing. As a result, our average cost of power globally was 3.4 cents per KWHR in our recent fiscal quarter. We view grid balancing as part of our core revenue and ESG strategy, and whenever possible, we seek to hedge energy prices."
If you have not seen our latest quarterly results then we recommend you watch 'Hive's Q3 2023 Results Webcast: HIVE Announces Adjusted EBITDA of $1.5 Million'.
Aydin Kilic, President & CEO of HIVE, noted, "We have increased our overall hashrate by 16% month over month from January 2023 to February 2023. We are continuously looking to optimize our allocation of energy as a resource. This month we did not sell energy back to the grid, but rather increased our operating hashrate as this was the most profitable operating mode. Additionally, our remaining GPU fleet is now generating approximately $100/MWHR in revenue, which is greater than the $/MWHR compared to Bitcoin ASIC miners in the current Bitcoin mining economics, for example an S19j Pro is generating approximately $93/MWHR with 43.1T difficulty and Bitcoin at $23,000. I am very proud of our team, that has shown expertise in optimizing the use of our GPUs. Even more impressive is our GPU HPC pilot project has been generating approximately $1,800/MWHR of revenue. We are constantly optimizing the deployment of our technology resources as a company to optimize profit. These advancements and agility allow us to generate positive gross mining margin during a crypto mining bear market. With a strong balance sheet of over $56 million of Bitcoin, HIVE is well positioned in the market today."
The Company's total Bitcoin production in February 2023 was:
- 250 BTC produced;
- 8.9 BTC produced per day on average;
- 2.81 Exahash of BTC Hashrate as of February 28, comprised of 2.58 Exahash of ASIC BTC hashrate and 0.23 Exahash of GPU BTC equivalent hashrate;
- Monthly average of 2.75 Exahash, which is equal to 91 Bitcoin per Exahash, comprised of an average of 2.58 Exahash of ASIC mining capacity and average of 170 PH/s of Bitcoin GPU mining capacity during the month;
- This represents a 16% month over month increase in average hashrate (January was 2.38 EH/s average hashrate).
Bitcoin HODL Update
As of today's press release, HIVE has approximately 2,365 Bitcoin, with a market value of over $56 million.
HIVE sold a total of 267.7 BTC for total net proceeds of $6.6 million in February 2023.
Bitcoin Global Network Mining Difficulty Is Volatile
Network difficulty factors are a significant variable in the Company's gross profit margins. The Bitcoin network difficulty was 39.4T as at February 1, and increased to 43.1T as at February 28, reaching an all-time high. Accordingly, Bitcoin mining difficulty ended the month about 9% higher than the beginning of the month.
The Bitcoin Network Difficulty is a publicly available statistic, that reflects the total number of Bitcoin miners online and is important in analyzing a company's gross profit margins, and number of Bitcoin produced. This data is available on many websites, here is one citation: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/difficulty.
As more people mine Bitcoin (difficulty increases), the daily Bitcoin block reward which presently is fixed at 900 Bitcoin per day, gets split amongst more miners; thus each miner receives a smaller portion of the block reward. Conversely, as Bitcoin prices fall, many miners may lose money, and power down, thus taking their hashrate off the network, causing Network Difficulty to decrease.
Those miners with the lowest costs of production; by virtue of having more efficient machines and/or lower energy costs, are able to continue their production during these volatile cycles. Not all miners will continuously mine during the month, as a result some miners will produce less Bitcoin than expected, relative to their advertised hashrate. For the foregoing reasons, HIVE will self-curtail part of its operations if the unhedged spot energy prices are uneconomical, thereby leaving part of its total gross hashrate unutilized.
All Bitcoin miners are striving to use the most efficient Bitcoin ASIC chips, and we are happy that we have been able to upgrade our global fleet during this crypto market downturn.