October public miner updates in four charts

October provided more of what we’ve seen all year – miners are steadily growing their hashrate and updating their fleets. A few miners had bigger ticket news items during the month, including formative headlines from some of the AI-focused companies. 

Here are the highlights of the month. 

Hashrate growth

Per usual, most all of the bitcoin miners in our update increased their hashrate under management, but a handful lost ground. 

The biggest winner for hashrate growth last month was Hut 8, which increased its total hashrate under management by 52% in October by adding 7.7 EH/s to its managed services business line. Other notable increases came from Cipher (15%), Cleanspark (13%), and MARA (9%).

Terawulf lost a significant chunk of hashrate over the month (-19%) on account of it selling its portion of its Nautilus joint-venture to Talen Energy. Core Scientific lost 13% as it continues to wind down both its self-mining and hosting business lines to make room for its HPC retrofits. 

The 12 public miners in our update collectively increased their nameplate hashrate by 2.3% from 188.53 EH/s at the end of September to 193.93% EH/s at the end of October, which respectively corresponded to 30% and 25% of the Bitcoin network at either month’s end. 

Bitcoin mined go up, selling go down in October

The bitcoin miners in our update collectively mined 13% more coins in October than September, and they sold 22% fewer coins over the month as well.

Many of the leading public miners continue to accumulate impressive stacks of bitcoin. This is particularly notable given the explosive movements in bitcoin price in the wake of the 2024 presidential election. As I write this, bitcoin is trading at $88,000, which gives the top four bitcoin holders in the bunch, Mara, Riot, Hut 8, and Cleanspark, bitcoin treasury values of $2.4 billion, $962 million, $802 million, and $766 million, respectively. 

During the last bull run, we saw public bitcoin miners hoard their coins during hot price action, only to sell them when the market turned cold. Will they learn their lesson this time around?

AI updates

Currently, five of the public bitcoin miners in our update have AI/HPC business arms that produce revenue: Bit Digital, Core Scientific, Hive, Hut 8, and IREN. Unfortunately, we can’t track all of these business lines on a quarterly basis, but we can track Bit Digital’s and IREN’s. 

For Bit Digital’s part, the miner is humming along and producing consistent revenue for its AI business line; in fact, there has been little-to-no variation month-by-month to its AI revenue for between August and October. 

IREN, on the other hand, has experienced more volatile revenue since it lost its anchor contract with Poolside at the end of August. 

Both miners are tackling the HPC elephant with a different strategy. IREN has retrofitted parts of its Bitcoin mining infrastructure to operate its fleet of H100 and H200 Nvidia GPUs, while Bit Digital is leasing space at a tier 3 data center, which it has outfitted with a mixture of purchased and rented H100 GPUs. 

Notable operational updates 

Below, we provide a TLDR of notable qualitative updates from each miner in our post. 

• Bitdeer: Anticipates that it will ship 3.7 EH/s of its SEALMINER A1 to its facilities in Texas and Norway starting in January 2025. Bitdeer has also secured capacity for 18 EH/s worth of chips for its commercially available SEALMINER A2, which it will begin shipping next year. Bitdeer expects to energize its 40 MW expansion in Tydal, Norway in December 2024; its 100 MW hydro-cooled conversion in Rockdale was delayed by the US longshoreman strikes, and it now anticipates completion during Q1 2025; and Bitdeer expects to install the primary substation for its 500 MW Bhutan expansion in Q1 2025.

• Bitfarms: Announced that it will deploy 10,000 miners, which Bitfarms originally slated for its Yguazu, Paraguay site, with Stronghold Digital in a new hosting agreement. Bitfarms is currently finalizing an acquisition of Stronghold, but it has yet to close. The company has 4 EH/s of equipment across two hosting agreements with Stronghold that it will energize “in several tranches over the coming months.” 

• Bit Digital: The company had ~21,568 ETH staked at the end of October, and it earned ~3.4% APY on its ETH over the month.

• Cipher: The company reported that it has begun upgrading its Odessa mining fleet and has “continued to develop the new Black Pearl data center.”

• Cleanspark: Cleanspark finalized its acquisition of GRIID on October 30. It also completed the purchase of two facilities in Knoxville, Tennessee in October which are collectively worth 20 MW. For construction updates, Cleanspark announced that it is developing 75 MW of immersion-cooling capacity, which will add 5 EH/s once energized, and that it “expects significant progress of electrical installation for both sites by the end of November 2024.” Two sites in Clinton, Mississippi, which Cleanspark previously announced it is acquiring, are now complete; Cleanspark will take control of them this month and boot them up with 1 EH/s of S21 pros in December.  

• Core Scientific: “Core Scientific completed a project to add 100 MW of infrastructure to its Pecos, TX bitcoin mining data center in October,” according to its October update. 

• Hive: Per its October update, Hive has begun construction on a 100 MW expansion in Paraguay.

• Hut 8: The company continued to work on its Vega, Texas site, which will host ~15 EH/s of Bitmain’s U3S21EXPH hydro-cooled, server-rack form factor miner; Hut anticipates it will complete and energize the site in Q2 2025. 

• IREN: IREN continues to receive shipments of its S21 XP ASIC miners, and the final shipments should arrive this month. The company installed the substation for its Childress Phase 3 expansion in October, and construction and electrical work is still ongoing. 

• MARA: While it happened after October, the most notable news for MARA recently is its acquisition of three bitcoin mines in Ohio. These sites currently have 122 MW of active capacity, with another 250 MW of additions possible over the coming year. 

• Riot: The company is close to completing its 400 MW phase 1 for Corsicana, and it has also started development of the site’s 600 MW phase 2.

• Terawulf: Terawulf has started upgrading its Lake Mariner with S19 XPs from its Nautilus facility, its stake in which it recently sold to its joint venture partner, Talen Energy. Terawulf is breaking into the HPC/AI game, as well, as it has broken ground on a 20 MW HPC hosting site called CB-1, which it claims that it will complete in Q1-2025; it’s planning to have another 50 MW of HPC hosting capacity (CB-2) completed in Q2 2025