Weekly Mining News 0711-0717

1.

According to Huanqiu.com, the second instance of Beijing's first Bitcoin "mining" contract case upheld the original verdict. The Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court held that virtual currency trading speculation endangers the property safety of the people and the financial security of the country, and that "mining" at the expense of electricity resources and carbon emissions is contrary to the high-quality development of the economy and society and the goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, and is contrary to the public interest, and therefore determined that the "mining" contract is invalid.

2.

Bitcoin mining company Greenidge Generation produced approximately 230 BTC in June, and its total Bitcoin production reached 1,183 in the first half of 2022 as of June 30. Greenidge currently has a computing power of about 2.5 EH/s, about 27,500 mining machines and 200 mining machines in transit.

3.

Bitcoin miner Gryphon Digital mined 71 bitcoins in June, up about 15% from 62 the previous month. The company also said a recent loan was borrowed and paid in bitcoin, eliminating any dollar-denominated price risk. In April, the company and Sphere 3D Corp terminated Gryphon's deal to go public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). (CoinDesk)

4.

Cryptocurrency infrastructure provider Lancium has partnered with Houston-based electricity producer Broad Reach Power to use electricity stored in batteries during periods of peak demand.

Lancium will receive power from Broad Reach to support part of its 25-megawatt Clean Campus data center in Texas. The agreement will allow Lancium to draw power from utility-scale batteries instead of from power plants when grid supply is short. (UPI)

5.

As extreme temperatures drive up electricity demand, Texas power grid operators are calling on residents and businesses to save energy. Crypto mining companies such as Argo Blockchain, Riot Blockchain, and Core Scientific have taken corresponding measures to reduce electricity use. Previously, Texas' cheap electricity and laissez-faire regulation attracted a large number of cryptocurrency miners to seek mining business here. (The Block)

6.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka today issued a risk warning to the public about virtual currencies. “The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has not granted any license or authorization to any entity or company to operate a program involving virtual currencies, including cryptocurrencies, nor has it authorized any initial token issuance (ICO), mining or virtual currency exchanges. There is no regulation or safeguards for virtual currencies in Sri Lanka.”

7.

Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has signed a bill to impose higher taxes on crypto miners. The amount of the tax will depend on the amount of electricity used to mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and the average electricity price. Kazakhstan introduced the digital mining fee on January 1, 2022 and received $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2022. (Bitcoin.com)

8.

JPMorgan Chase said that the electricity cost of one Bitcoin has dropped from about $24,000 in early June to about $13,000 now, mainly because miners have deployed more efficient mining machines. This helps miners' profitability and may reduce the pressure on miners to sell their Bitcoin assets. But JPMorgan Chase believes that the decline in electricity costs may be unfavorable to the future price outlook of Bitcoin.

9.

Crypto mining company Bit Digital released its production update for June 2022, mined a total of 67.6 BTC and 0 ETH; as of June 30, 2022, the holdings of BTC and ETH were 860.7 and 313.6, respectively; it had 38,135 Bitcoin mining machines and 731 Ethereum mining machines, with an estimated maximum total hash rate of 2.7 EH/s and 0.3 TH/s, respectively.

10.

Affected by Celsius' bankruptcy, the price of Bitcoin mining machines has fallen to its lowest point since 2020. According to ASIC data, Bitmain's Antminer S19 and S19 Pro are bid at about $20-23/TH, while the price of these models has reached $40/TH in recent months and as high as $119/TH last year. (CoinDesk)

11.

Bitcoin mining company CleanSpark purchased Bitcoin mining machines at a significant discount, including 1,061 Whatsminer M30S and 1,800 Antminer S19 XP. The company's computing power has increased by 47% in the past six months, and Bitcoin's monthly production has increased by 50% during the same period. Buying mining machines on dips is a common practice in bear markets.

12.

Compass Mining released a blog post saying that it has recovered the mining machines hosted by Dynamics Corp in Maine, USA. The two companies have been in conflict over overdue payments and "seized" hardware for the past month. The court order issued on July 5 allowed Compass to access the machines. The court prohibited Dynamics Corp from operating, moving or otherwise disposing of the equipment and stated that Compass has the right to use the equipment. Compass is now shipping all the equipment from the Maine factory back to its logistics and repair center in Denver.

As previously reported, Dynamics Mining said it had terminated Compass's hosting agreement in Maine because it failed to pay utility bills and hosting fees. (The Block)

13.

According to Glassnode’s weekly on-chain report, miner capitulation is still ongoing as extreme financial pressures are certainly present, adding that there is likely to be continued “pain” and further downside risk before the market establishes a resilient bottom.

Analysts who conducted the study said Bitcoin investors are not out of the woods yet. Even for professional traders, it is difficult to accurately predict when the market will bottom out.

Glassnode noted that miners are still selling, as they have been doing for the past few months. However, in previous bear markets, miner capitulation lasted about four months, so the outflow could continue into the third quarter.

It also noted that the decline during the 2018/19 bear market lasted about 15 months and ended with an 84% drop in Bitcoin prices from peak to trough. A similar scenario during this cycle could see Bitcoin bottom out around $12,000-$13,000, with the market remaining range-bound until the first quarter of 2023. (BeInCrypto)

14.

Crypto mining company BIT Mining (formerly 500.com) is selling a majority stake in its subsidiary Loto Interactive. The company announced on Tuesday that it had signed a transaction agreement with an unnamed third party for 51% of Loto Interactive's shares. After the transaction is completed, BIT Mining will maintain an 8.79% stake. BIT Mining explained that the move is in line with the company's plan to continue expanding in the United States.

It is reported that BIT Mining once controlled three Bitcoin mining farms in China through Loto Interactive. After Loto Interactive closed its business in China last year, BIT Mining raised $50 million to transfer overseas. (The Block)

15.

TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc., a blockchain infrastructure and services provider, announced today that its wholly owned operating subsidiary has entered into a hosting agreement with Lake Parime USA Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of clean energy infrastructure company Lake Parime Limited.

Lake Parime's nuclear facility in Ohio will host 3,000 of its S19J Pro bitcoin miners, which once deployed (by the end of September 2022) will represent more than 300 PH/s of clean computing power for TAAL. (CNW)

16.

Paraguay’s Senate has passed a cryptocurrency bill that still needs presidential approval. The bill will allow crypto miners to use excess energy generated at competitive prices and will exempt crypto companies operating in Paraguay from value-added tax.

In addition, cryptocurrency trading platforms will be recognized as regulated entities and will need to register as virtual asset providers with the Paraguayan Anti-Money Laundering Secretariat (SEPRELAD). (Portal do Bitcoin)

17.

GitHub Actions and Azure virtual machines (VMs) are being used for cloud-based cryptocurrency mining, demonstrating that malicious actors continue to attempt to attack cloud resources for illicit purposes.

"Attackers can easily profit from abusing GitHub-provided runners or servers to run an organization's pipelines and automation by maliciously downloading and installing their own cryptocurrency miners," Trend Micro researcher Magno Logan said in a report last week.

Trend Micro said it found no fewer than 1,000 repositories and more than 550 code samples that used runners provided by GitHub to exploit the platform for cryptocurrency mining. The code hosting service has been notified of the issue. (OODALoop)

18.

In a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Energy (DOE), a small congressional group led by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sought that the two agencies require more emissions and energy usage reporting from the crypto mining industry.

“Our findings are troubling, demonstrating that crypto miners are energy hogs that contribute a significant and rapidly growing share of carbon emissions,” the lawmakers said in a statement. “Our investigation suggests that the U.S. crypto mining industry as a whole is likely suffering from energy and emissions problems,” they added.

The lawmakers said the seven largest crypto miners in the United States have currently developed more than 1,045 megawatts of energy capacity for their mining operations, enough to power all residents of Houston. The miners' plans to increase capacity by nearly 230%, enough to power an additional 1.9 million homes, further worried the lawmakers.

They also noted that much remains unknown about the full scope of mining activity and called on the two agencies to work together to require reporting on energy use and emissions from crypto mining companies. The group asked the EPA and DOE to respond by August 15. (CoinDesk)

19.

This week's closing data disclosed by TradingView shows that due to the positive impact of Bitcoin's rebound to the $21,000 range, the closing prices of most listed mining companies rose on the last trading day of this week, among which Northern Data's stock price rose by 10.84%, Hive Blockchain rose by 8.95%, Cipher Mining rose by 8.75%, and Riot Blockchain rose by 4.70%. The only listed mining company whose stock price fell was Mawson Infrastructure, which fell by 5.61%. (The Block)

20.

As the geographical location of Bitcoin mining changes, immersion liquid cooling technology is becoming more and more popular than traditional air cooling methods. Among them, Riot Blockchain and Argo Blockchain have invested in large-scale mining facilities in Texas that use liquid cooling systems. (The Block)

twenty one,

Arcane Research data shows that listed mining companies sold about 14,600 bitcoins in June, almost four times as much as in May, while only 3,900 bitcoins were mined during the same period. This means that they sold nearly 400% of their bitcoin production and eventually exhausted nearly 25% of their bitcoin holdings.

Core Scientific and Bitfarms sold the most bitcoins. Core Scientific sold nearly 10,000 bitcoins in May and June, including 7,000 in June. Bitfarms sold 3,353 bitcoins in June. German company Northern Data ranked third in sales, selling all its bitcoins and ethers in May and June.

Marathon and Hut 8 did not sell in May and June, so they now hold the most bitcoins, 10,055 and 7,405 respectively. Riot ranks third with 6,654 bitcoins.

twenty two,

Celsius bankruptcy documents show that Celsius subsidiary Celsius Mining currently owns 80,850 mining machines, of which 43,632 are in operation, and it is expected to operate 120,000 mining machines by the end of the year.

In the seven days ending July 14, Celsius Mining produced 14.2 bitcoins per day, a total of 3,114 bitcoins in 2021, and an estimated 10,118 bitcoins in 2022.

Prior to filing for bankruptcy, Celsius reportedly sold around 7,000 mining rigs in a confidential auction. (BeInCrypto)

twenty three,

Binh Dang, an analyst at crypto analysis company CryptoQuant, wrote that Bitcoin miners' reserves dropped sharply on July 16, which may indicate that miners took out a large amount of BTC from their wallets and may plan to sell them.

Miner reserves are an indicator of the total amount of Bitcoin currently stored in miner wallets. When the indicator value rises, it means that more BTC is flowing into miner wallets, indicating that miners may be optimistic about the price of cryptocurrencies and choose to increase their holdings. On the contrary, it means that miners are withdrawing BTC and selling them on exchanges. This trend may be unfavorable for Bitcoin. (Bitcoinist)