Riot Blockchain Buys An Additional 1,040 New Mining Machines From Bitmain

Yesterday afternoon, Riot Blockchain, a listed Nasdaq
NDAQ
public cryptocurrency mining company, announced the purchase of an additional 1,040 next-generation Bitmain S19 (95 TH) Antminers for $1.9 million from BitmainTech. The more energy-efficient machines are expected to increase the Company’s ability to produce Bitcoins.

The Company said in a prior announcement in April that it bought 1000 S19 miners.

This brings a total of 2,040 new miners into action. Both purchases were made from Riot’s cash on hand.

Riot said, “the total 2,040 new S19 miners will be received and deployed in the third quarter of 2020. Once the total 2,040 new S19s are received and fully deployed, Riot estimates its aggregate operating hash rate will increase over 80% to approximately 457 petahash per second (“PH/s”) and utilize approximately 16.5 megawatts of energy.” 

Bitcoin is not free and mining the currency uses an increasing amount of electrical power to solve a mathematical puzzle. Once solved, a new puzzle is generated with ever-increasing complexity. The harder the problem, the more power miners use to solve it. Some environmental experts have said that the hungry energy process is wasteful. 

The Company is based in Colorado but has positioned part of its Bitcoin mining operation to upstate New York.