Canada-listed bitcoin miner HIVE Digital Technologies (TSX-V:HIVE, NASDAQ:HIVE) is reinforcing its fleet of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) bitcoin mining rigs to capitalise on the upcoming bitcoin halving event in April.
HIVE has upgraded its fleet of ASIC miners by integrating 7,000 of the latest Bitmain S21 Antminers to enhance mining efficiency and reduce production costs.
Introducing these advanced miners will add 1.4 exahashes per second (EH/s) worth of processing power to HIVE's mining capacity to maintain competitiveness with other major bitcoin miners.
President and chief executive Aydin Kilic explained: "We are thrilled to announce that we have received and installed our January batch of Bitmain S21 Antminers, the latest and most efficient machines on the market.
“These miners each have 200 TH/s and efficiency of 17.5 J/TH. To put this into perspective, this means that at current Bitcoin network difficulty of 75.5T these machines can produce a Bitcoin at a cost of approximately $10,000, assuming a power price of $0.04 per KWHR.
“HIVE has purchased 7,000 of these machines, which in total will provide 1.4 EH/s of high-efficiency mining capacity to our fleet."
The next batch of ASICs is scheduled for delivery by the end of February.
Bitcoin halving occurs every four years and reduces the reward for mining new bitcoin blocks by half to maintain its scarcity. Halving typically increases bitcoin's market price.
In January, HIVE produced 234.6 bitcoins, sustaining an average daily BTC production of 7.6.
HIVE did observe a slight contraction in its mining capacity, ending the month with a total hashrate of 3.85 EH/s, a decline of 5.6% from the previous month.
This reduction was primarily attributed to adjustments in its ASIC and GPU BTC mining operations.
Despite this, the company's strategic decision to hold onto all bitcoin mined during the month paid off, with its holdings position swelling to 1,939 BTC by the end of January 2024 - a 14% increase from the previous month.
As of 9 February, bitcoin’s spot price was more than $46,500, marking a 100% year-on-year increase.
Executive chairman Frank Holmes stated: "We have upgraded our fleet of ASICs, to improve our global fleet efficiency to reduce our average production cost per Bitcoin.
"In addition to this, we have been HODL'ing our Bitcoin reserves ahead of the halving.
"With the halving event in April 2024, the global daily Bitcoin block reward will reduce from 900 Bitcoin per day to 450 Bitcoin per day. This underscores the scarcity of Bitcoin, and thus we believe increasing our HODL will put HIVE in a strong position."