North American block reward miner Core Scientific has made its latest hardware acquisition this week, announcing the purchase of 112,800 ASIC mining machines.
The firm entered into a sales agreement with strategic partner Bitmain Technologies Limited to buy a mix of its S19, S19 Pro, S19J, and S19J Pro Antminers hardware rigs. The sale brings the total number of Bitmain S19s miners operated by Core Scientific to 188,824.
Core Scientific did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition. But this agreement more than doubles Core Scientific’s existing 19 Series fleet of hosted owned Antminers. Once operational, these new ASIC mining units will bring the total 19 Series computational power hosted with Core Scientific to over 18.1 exahash.
Core Scientific plans to use half of the machines for its own BTC mining, while the other half is under contract with existing clients, according to a CoinDesk report. The purchase of the mining rigs is designed to bolster Core Scientific position in the block reward mining sector. CEO Kevin Turner was quoted by the news outlet saying that the firm intends to grow its global share of BTC’s hashrate from 5% to 12%.
“Through our last purchase agreement with Bitmain in December 2020, we became the largest blockchain infrastructure and hosting provider in North America with 76,024 units in our fleet. Now, just 4 months later, we have more than doubled our fleet, and intend to continue to expand our self-mining operations throughout 2021,” Turner said.
This current deal is the latest chapter in a long-standing partnership between Core Scientific and Bitmain. The firm is the first and only authorized “in-warranty” Bitmain repair center in North America. Core Scientific can service and repair Bitmain machines through this strategic and preferred partnership, which substantially reduces downtime typically involved with repairs.
Some decisions can seem like a good idea at the time, but once you go beyond the surface, it starts to appear like one of the biggest business errors of the year. That will be the fate of Core Scientific if they don’t quickly wise up and focus their massive hardware fleet on a blockchain protocol that drives real utility and economic value.
That value is only found on the Bitcoin SV network. BTC is a Ponzi scheme network masquerading as a Store of Value. Perhaps before making any more deals, Core Scientific should go back and reread Satoshi’s Bitcoin Whitepaper if it really values its shareholders.
See also: Equity analyst John Pitts and fintech expert Len Mazur discuss TAAL, Bitcoin and the transaction processing industry
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