Listed firm sells $14M of shares for 1 EH/s in Bitcoin mining power

The Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Bit Digital has announced it will issue $13.9 million in shares in exchange for mining hardware.

According to a Nov. 11 announcement, Bit Digital has inked asset-purchase agreements with non-U.S. investors to issue 4,344,711 shares valued at $3.20 each in exchange for Bitcoin miners boasting a combined hash power of 1,000 petahashes per second, or 1 exahash per second.

Bit Digital launched its BTC mining business in February 2020, quickly amassing 1,250 PH/s in power by October. The additional miners will nearly double Bit Digital’s operational hashing power once installed.

The company also expects to install 2,000 previously purchased MicroBT Whatsminer M21 ASIC miners by January 2021, adding a further 6.2 PH/s in operational hash rate.

With a projected hashing power of more than 2.3 exahashes per second, Bit Digital’s decision to exchange $13.9 million in shares for miners will help the company rank alongside North America’s top mining firms by hash rate.

Last month, Nevada-based Marathon Patent Group announced it plans to command 2.56 EH/s by July 2021. The announcement has Marathon on-track to surpass the hashing power of Riot Blockchain, which is targeting 2.3 EH/s by July of next year.

With the Bitcoin network currently producing 121 EH/s in total, Bit Digital, Marathon, and Riot Blockchain aim to command more than 1.9% of the current global hash rate each.

In February, the Peter Thiel-backed Layer1 Technologies also revealed it is planning to secure 30% of the global hash rate before the end of next year.