Iris Energy Plans Boosting Internal Mining Capacity to 5.5 EH/s

• The debt it incurred from the 10 EH/s deal with Bitmain has been completely settled.
• Iris is contemplating liquidating any miners it has that are beyond its 5.5 EH/s capacity.

Following a severe cash flow shortfall in the month of November, Iris Energy said on Monday that their hash rate had returned to levels seen before the FTX incident. The Bitcoin mining company plans to boost its internal mining capacity from 2.0 EH/s to 5.5 EH/s during the next several months. Proposed solutions to the difficult mathematical challenges needed to mine Bitcoin blocks are measured in units called exahashes, where one exahash is equivalent to one quintillion hashes.

The mining firm stated:

“Iris Energy has successfully utilized remaining prepayments of US$67 million under its 10 EH/s contract with Bitmain… to acquire 4.4 EH/s of new S19j Pro miners without any additional cash outlay.”

Getting Rid of Miners Beyond 5.5 EH/s Capacity

Bitmain makes the Antminer mining hardware. Since November, when it was forced to unplug a swath of mining equipment used as collateral for $103 million in loans from creditors, the business has lost 3.6 EH/s.

Like many mining companies at the time, it was unable to generate enough cash flow to pay its obligations due to the combined effects of growing energy costs and the falling price of Bitcoin. Core Scientific, the biggest Bitcoin mining facility in North America, declared bankruptcy in December, while a winter storm in Texas the same month disrupted Bitcoin output at Argo Blockchain.

But now, Iris claims that all of the debt it incurred from the 10 EH/s deal with Bitmain has been completely settled and that the company is “debt free.”

Iris is contemplating liquidating any miners it has that are beyond its 5.5 EH/s capacity in order to acquire more capital. It plans to reinvest these funds towards “growth initiatives and/or corporate purposes.”