On July 28, the bitcoin mining company Bitfarms announced the completion of the second phase of its facility expansion, by adding roughly 18 megawatts (MW) of capacity to the operation. The mining facility dubbed “The Bunker,” now has approximately 3.8 exahash per second (EH/s), after the 18 MW increase boosted the computational power by 200 petahash per second (PH/s).
Bitfarms Adds 18MW to ‘The Bunker’, Company Says Daily Production Hits 16.8 Bitcoin
Bitfarms Ltd. (Nasdaq: BITF) announced that the company has upgraded The Bunker by adding 18 MW of capacity to the facility. The company has completed Phase 2 of building The Bunker and there are a total of 9,450 bitcoin miners installed. The bunker began operations in March 2022 and phase 3 will see the construction of the data center. Phase 3 aims to add 3,250 more miners to the facility, which will add 325 PH/s of hashrate.
For now, Phase 2 was an 18 MW increase which added 200 PH/s to the operation, and the company claims to manage a total of 3.8 EH/s today or roughly 2% of the current global hashrate. “Completing Phase 2 of The Bunker expansion is a strategic milestone that contributed to growing our hashrate to 3.8 exahash per second (EH/s), up 5.5% from the beginning of July,” Geoff Morphy, the president and COO of Bitfarms said in a statement.
Morphy added:
With an additional 3 MW of low-cost hydro that came online this month at our mining facility in Washington State, our total operating capacity is now 158 MW. Significantly, our higher hash rate has resulted in an increase in our current output to 16.8 BTC/day, a 15% increase from 14.6 BTC/day at the end of June.
Bitcoin Mining Industry Weathers the Storm, Bitfarms Exec Expects a ‘Gradual Increase in Hashrate’ to Reach Company’s August and Year-End Goals
Bitfarms completing Phase 2 comes at a time when digital asset prices are much lower than they were a few months ago. Damian Polla, Bitfarm’s Latam general manager explained during the first week of June, that falling bitcoin prices constitute a challenge. “The biggest challenge facing the sector in the short term, both in Argentina and globally, is the fall in the price of bitcoin, which reduces revenues and increases operating costs,” Polla said at the time.
A lot has happened in bitcoin mining and the network difficulty adjustment recently made it 5% easier to find BTC block rewards. Bitcoin Marathon mining recently secured 254MW of power to improve operations and mining firm Cleanspark says the crypto winter has shown “unprecedented opportunity.”
In addition to The Bunker, the company’s Washington state farms just got an additional 3 MW of capacity and the low-cost hydropower and stable electricity rates give the facility an advantage over the company’s other mining sites.
“Last week, we selectively redeployed some mining assets while continuing to bring new miners online,” Morphy added. “Coupled with slight delays in receiving new mining shipments, the net effect is that we expect to experience a more gradual increase in our hashrate and achieve our 4 PE/s target in early August. Moreover, we remain confident in the execution of our current international growth plan and in reaching 6 PE/s by the end of the year.
