Les inquiétudes concernant la consommation d’énergie dissipées alors que les États américains montrent de l’hospitalité aux mineurs privés de crypto

L’industrie du minage de crypto a traversé plusieurs revers, mais le débat autour de la consommation d’énergie est resté controversé. Lors d’une discussion au coin du feu pendant la conférence du Forum économique mondial 2023 à Davos en janvier, la PDG de Hut 8, Jaime Leverton, a déclaré que les mineurs de Bitcoin repoussent les frontières de l’innovation en utilisant l’énergie résiduelle pour l’alimentation. Elle a notamment observé que les mineurs se tournent de plus en plus vers le méthane résiduel, les décharges et le gaz de torchage pour produire de l’énergie.

The convenience for these new operations is that they can be located where waste energy is being created, as they do not necessarily require a connection to the grid. Dwelling on mining developments, the Hut 8 executive also noted that Bitcoin miners are starting to develop in rural areas in Africa and are now funding themselves. Worth noting, Leverton is a founding member of the Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), which reported in January that more than half of Bitcoin production is mined using renewable energy sources.

Le défenseur de la cryptomonnaie affirme que l’utilisation d’énergie durable du Bitcoin dépasse 50 %

En parlant de durabilité, le défenseur de la cryptomonnaie David Batten a récemment démontré que le mix énergétique durable du Bitcoin a augmenté de 6,2 % par an depuis janvier 2020. La décision de la Chine d’interdire le minage de crypto aurait largement contribué à atteindre les niveaux actuels de durabilité, mais selon le Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF), environ 20 % du hashrate du Bitcoin entre septembre 2021 et janvier 2022 provenait d’opérations souterraines dans le pays.

Une recherche de septembre 2022 du Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) suggérait que l’intensité des émissions du Bitcoin augmentait. En fait, environ 62 % du mix énergétique du Bitcoin provenait de combustibles fossiles, une affirmation que Batten conteste. Il a déclaré qu’en revanche, les émissions ont diminué au cours des trois dernières années et demie. Batten a soutenu que le Bitcoin se démarque des autres marchés parce qu’il réduit ses émissions à mesure que sa capitalisation boursière augmente, ce qu’il compare au PIB.

Il a ajouté que, à mesure que davantage d’entreprises adoptent des solutions plus propres, cette tendance continuera de gagner en importance. Un autre rapport du CCAF indique que le Bitcoin n’utilise que 37,6 % d’énergie durable, sans prendre en compte certains autres facteurs durables, dont le minage de Bitcoin hors réseau. En incluant toutes les exclusions, l’estimation complète du minage durable était de 52,6 %, pas très éloignée des 58,9 % rapportés par le BMC.

To learn more about Bitcoin, check out our Investing in Bitcoin guide.

Il y a eu des difficultés, mais des signes de reprise apparaissent

Reminiscing the brighter day in the fireside chat, Leverton recalled how as many as 40 Bitcoin mining companies went public in North America. This, she acknowledged, was only during the high times of a two-year period that has been full of swings. The Hut 8 chief is, however, optimistic the shake-up that hit the industry last year has started to wear off. Leverton averred that those who over-leveraged their investments have struggled, but now it is a period of consolidation in the market, where companies are diversifying their portfolios.

Sabre56 finalise une levée de fonds de 35 millions de dollars pour financer un site d’hébergement

Digital asset management consulting firm Sabre56 disclosed this week a $35 million raise, mostly from private participants, to fund a hosting site it is building. The firm intends to complete the 150 megawatts (MW) project by the end of the year with clients comprising companies and individuals it has close associations with already lined up. The project’s initial phase will comprise four already under-construction sites in Wyoming and Texas, boasting a total capacity of 115 MW.
Though the firm didn’t share specifics on the price of the fixed-rate electricity contracts it is tied under, CEO Phil Harvey said it will have flexible but competitive pricing ($0.068-$0.072 kWh) depending on terms like contract length and machines involved. The company further plans to scale its capacity after 2023, adding 150 MW annually for the next four years. This significant investment will be funded by returns from the operations it will run once it has launched the hosting business.

Luxor Mining voit une opportunité dans les Ordinals en vogue

In other news, Luxor Mining announced on Monday it acquired OrdinalHub, the group behind Ordinals, the Bitcoin-based NFTs which have continued drawing mixed reactions from the crypto community. The group supporting Ordinals holds that the inscriptions offer new use cases for Bitcoin – a view contradicted by those who argue that the latter deviates from the original peer-to-peer cash system vision.

The movement recently extended to the Litecoin blockchain, which leverages a proof of work consensus for its network. Notwithstanding the difference in views within the community, the acquisition could work out well for the full-stack Bitcoin mining company, given the ‘movement’ is in its early days. In addition, not many firms have also sought to take advantage, giving the miner an edge among enterprise-grade solutions providers.

To learn more about Litecoin, check out our Investing in Litecoin guide.

Expansion en Asie du Sud‑Est

Luxor also this week announced expansion into Southeast Asia thanks to a partnership with Thailand-based mining service provider Cryptodrilling. The integrated blockchain company, which runs mining pools for Bitcoin and select altcoins, described Southeast Asia as an ‘exciting’ region from a growth point of view. The infrastructure and hosting services provider will integrate Luxor’s technology into its platform, hashOS.app, as part of the collaboration. The local firm will also benefit from mining advisory on matters like power contracts and business acquisitions.
Earlier this month, Luxor unveiled a marketplace for new mining machines enabling direct interactions between buying and selling parties via a request-for-quote system (RFQ). The company said the marketplace will help “improve price discovery and increasing liquidity in the secondary market” owing to the RFQ system. The mining rigs market has seen an increase in available stock amid the bear market. The saturation results from machines either unplugged to unsuitable conditions or dumped entirely by financially-troubled miners.

Hive Blockchain a réalisé un bénéfice au T4, malgré une perte nette de 90 M$

Following a justified delay, Vancouver-based crypto mining firm Hive Blockchain announced its quarterly earnings for the three months ending décembre 2022 this week. The NASDAQ and FSE-listed crypto miner said in a press release on Tuesday that it experienced a significant loss in this period due to Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake consensus and a Bitcoin price that generally turned sour.
Hive had $14.3 million in revenue, and a gross mining margin of $3.6 million, accounting for 25% of the income accrued from its crypto mining operations compared to a gross mining margin of $15.9 million (54% of the revenue generated from crypto mining) in the same period of the preceding year. The notable decline was largely due to a downturn of 67% in the pricing of digital assets from Q4 2022. Hive said it realized a profit from its mining operations in its fiscal third quarter despite the unfavorable environment by leveraging strategies such as hedging its energy contracts, selling excess power to the grid, and optimizing its operating capacity to maximize profit per kWh.

Mise à jour des opérations minières

The crypto miner reported a net loss of $90 million, increasing from $37 million in the previous quarter. The performance in the last three months of the year contrasted with the previous year, during which the publicly-traded miner saw an income of $51.2 million. Hive mined 787 Bitcoin in this quarter, representing an increase of 13% year over year, an indicator that the miner has been growing its operating hashrate.
CEO and President Aydin Kilic noted a 30% year-over-year surge in its Bitcoin reserves, now totaling 2,372 Bitcoin, despite a 60% increase in the Bitcoin mining difficulty during this period towards all-time high levels near 40 trillion. The spike in Bitcoin production cost to $13,599 per token was expected considering the difficulty adjustment, while the average Bitcoin price was $18,072. This compares poorly as it represents a 37% rise in production costs from the previous quarter, where the average cost was $9,894 at an average Bitcoin price of $21,252.

Survivre au marché baissier

Given mining is no longer as profitable as it used to be, Hive has begun repurposing its GPUs to service other high-performance computing workloads via the Hive Performance Cloud (HPC) powered by its GPUs. The miner is also redirecting some of the rigs it used to mine Ether to mine other PoW tokens, then converts them to Bitcoin. Hive said that with HPC, the level of profitability is 25 times more than traditional mining. Frank Holmes, the company’s executive chairman, explained that Hive is in a unique position due to the global shortage of the kind of high-quality chips that it owns. He opined that though HPC took a while to roll out, it should blow up at least tenfold over the coming year.

Le Montana rejoint la liste des États américains qui soutiennent les opérations minières privées

Power supply has remained a plight of miners, more so those in the US, but some states are determined to change this narrative. Earlier this month, the Mississippi Senate passed a similar bill to protect crypto miners from discrimination through a well-defined framework. Missouri lawmaker Phil Christofanelli also recently introduced a bill that will similarly allow its miners in the state to run a Bitcoin node. Both initiatives, which seek to support mining businesses in the respective states, received a contribution from Satoshi Action Fund Porter.
This week, the Montana Senate passed a bill that counters discrimination of at-home crypto miners in utility rates resulting from zoning laws. The bill, which too had input from Porter, received 37 votes in favor from 50 lawmakers and will now need approval from the states House before being signed into law by the state governor Greg Gianforte. In addition to granting crypto miner’s the right to mine, the proposed bill also featured a provision to get rid of taxes imposed for using crypto as a payment method.

Kazakhstan agit pour réguler le minage intensif de crypto face aux tensions du réseau électrique

The picture is different in Kazakhstan, whose government earlier this month resorted to tame the effect of crypto mining on its power grid. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed new legislation to that effect into law with official communication posted on the president’s website indicating that the decision will help the country alleviate the incessant pressure that its power resources have seen over the years, both from legal and illegal operators.

The Central Asian country will allow crypto miners to use electricity resources only when there is an apparent surplus on the national grid. This move might be seen as inflammatory for mining operations, but Kazakhstan still wants the industry close to heart. The president’s office also informed that miners leveraging other sources of energy, such as private generators or renewable sources, will not be affected by this ban, only those who draw power from the national grid.

The government of Kazakhstan also plans to rubber-stamp a roster of authorized mining pools that firms can exploit. It has instituted a policy requiring miners to liquidate a proportion of the mined crypto to exchanges registered with the Astana International Finance Centre, which serves as the country’s designated economic zone. Miners are obligated to sell 50% of their crypto to these registered exchanges by 2024, with the requirement increasing to 75% by 2025.