Iris Energy’s December Hashrate Rises 14% as Revenue Falls Again
The Australian miner continues to build out mining capacity in Canada.
Jan 11, 2022 at 2:04 p.m. UTCUpdated May 11, 2023 at 7:14 p.m. UTC
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Nasdaq-listed Iris Energy’s (IREN) average hashrate was up 14% month on month in December 2021 while operating revenue fell 6.4%, the company disclosed in a Tuesday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
- The miner’s computing power on the bitcoin network reached 748 petahash per second (PH/s) in December, compared with 657 PH/s in November. The Australian firm attributed the increase to the installation of 1,666 rigs of the Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro that replaced older machines at its Canal Flats, British Columbia, site.
- Iris Energy mined 124 bitcoins in December compared to 113 bitcoins in November.
- During the same period, operating revenue in U.S. dollars fell 6.4% to $6.2 million as revenue per bitcoin mined plunged to 14.8% and cost of electricity per bitcoin mined increased by 4.6%. The company attributed the revenue drop to losses in the price of bitcoin and increased difficulty in mining.
- Iris Energy saw a 10% drop in revenue in November.
- As of writing, shares of Iris Energy were up 0.81% in pre-market trading.
- Two new sites in British Columbia will bring in a combined 3.9 exahash per second (EH/s) when operational, Iris Energy said. One site in Mackenzie will deliver 1.5 EH/s in 2022, with the first 0.3 EH/s expected in the second quarter of 2022. Another site in Prince George will deliver 1.4 EH/s in the third quarter of 2022, expanding to 2.4 EH/s sometime in 2023, according to the statement.
- In addition to these two mines, Iris Energy is developing sites that will bring in 10.6 EH/s when completed, it said. The miner is expecting 138,574 Antminers to ship by the third quarter of 2023, the filing said.
- The company claims its crypto mining operations are “100% renewable since inception” because they use 98% renewable energy and the rest is made up for by the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates.
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Eliza Gkritsi is a CoinDesk contributor focused on the intersection of crypto and AI.