Bitfarms, a publicly-traded Canadian cryptocurrency mining company, hosted their Q2 earnings call on the 29th of August. The earnings call detailed Bitfarm’s performance over the second financial quarter and the company’s strategic plans moving forward.
Over the quarter, the company mined 974 bitcoin and 4,857 litecoin. The breakeven figure for mining bitcoin was $2,259. This figure accounts only for the electricity costs of mining. Earlier this year, CoinShares estimated that miners with access to the lowest electricity rates could be producing each bitcoin for less than $3,500. However, this figure takes into account other costs such as the depreciation of hardware and cooling expenses.
With an electricity rate of $0.04 per KWh, Bitfarm’s reported breakeven cost of producing each bitcoin is in line with estimates by CoinShares given that only electricity costs are taken into consideration. It was noted on the earnings call that the vast majority of their hash rate is deployed on the Bitcoin network with Bitcoin mining accounting for 94% of Q2 revenue.
Bitfarms increased the hash rate they have deployed for mining by roughly 41% over the quarter. This was the result of the company acquiring an additional 3,267 ASIC mining rigs. The company has also spent the amount of $11.1 million on latest generation ASIC hardware which is estimated to be delivered and deployed in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Bitfarms has also been focusing on expanding its infrastructure which houses and powers the ASIC hardware. Bitfarms currently operates five facilities in Québec. Two more facilities are also currently being developed in the Québec region which will add collectively over 100 MW in additional energy capacity. All Bitfarms facilities are powered by hydroelectric energy. Bitfarms secured $20 million in debt financing to fund the acquisition of new hardware and infrastructure development.
