HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:HIVE) is pleased to announce the production figures from the Company's global Bitcoin operations for the month of April 2023, with 273 Bitcoin produced in April, and a current BTC HODL balance of approximately 2,284 (as of May 1, 2023). (all amounts in US dollars, unless otherwise indicated).
Summary Overview:
- HIVE produced 273 Bitcoin in the month of April, from ASIC and GPU mining operations, representing an average of 81 Bitcoin Per Exahash, with an average hashrate of 3.38 Exahash per second ("EH/s") for the month of April 2023, a 9% month over month increase in average hashrate;
- HIVE produced an average of 9.1 BTC per day in April 2023;
- HIVE has manufactured, tested, received and installed 5,750 BuzzMiners in its data centers, all of which are operating as of today;
- HIVE ended the month with 3.38 EH/s of mining capacity, including ASIC and GPU BTC hashrate;
- HIVE sold all of the Bitcoin earned from our GPU mining hashrate payouts.
April 2023 Production Figures
Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of HIVE stated, "We are very happy to be producing 273 Bitcoin while difficulty has reached an all-time high. Additionally, our monthly HPC income has increased by 24% month over month, from March to April."
Aydin Kilic, President & CEO of HIVE noted, "We are continuing to optimize our ASIC operations, by managing the efficiency of our machines to operate for best profit on a $/MWHR basis, this may involve down-clocking the firmware for some miners in our fleet to obtain a better J/TH efficiency figure, and thus a better $/MWHR profit figure. We strive to optimize for profitable mining, where the analytics of the HIVE technical team provide a competitive edge in our approach to digital asset mining. Additionally, for the month of April our GPU fleet was generating approximately $109/MWHR in revenue, which is higher than many ASICs on the Bitcoin network were earning in April. Code-based optimizations are just one tool we use to optimize our gross mining margins and deliver value for shareholders."
The Company's total Bitcoin production in April 2023 was:
- 273 BTC produced;
- 9.1 BTC produced per day on average;
- 3.3 Exahash of BTC hashrate as of April 30, comprised of 3.14 EH/s of ASIC BTC hashrate and 0.16 EH/s of GPU BTC equivalent hashrate;
- Monthly average of 3.38 EH/s, which is equal to 81 Bitcoin per Exahash, comprised of an average of 3.15 EH/s of ASIC mining capacity and average of 230 PH/s of Bitcoin GPU mining capacity during the month;
- This represents a 9% month over month increase in average hashrate (March was 3.09 EH/s average hashrate).
Bitcoin Global Network Mining Difficulty Is Volatile
Network difficulty factors are a significant variable in the Company's gross profit margins. The Bitcoin network difficulty was 46.84T as of April 1, and increased to 48.71T as of April 30, reaching an all-time high. Accordingly, Bitcoin mining difficulty ended the month about 4% higher than the beginning of the month.
The Bitcoin Network Difficulty is a publicly available statistic, which reflects the total number of Bitcoin miners online and is important in analyzing a company's gross profit margins, and number of Bitcoin produced. This data is available on many websites, here is one citation: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/difficulty.
As more people mine Bitcoin (difficulty increases), the daily Bitcoin block reward which presently is fixed at 900 Bitcoin per day, gets split amongst more miners; thus each miner receives a smaller portion of the block reward. Conversely, as Bitcoin prices fall, many miners may lose money, and power down, thus taking their hashrate off the network, causing Network Difficulty to decrease.
Those miners with the lowest costs of production; by virtue of having more efficient machines and/or lower energy costs, are able to continue their production during these volatile cycles. Not all miners will continuously mine during the month, as a result some miners will produce less Bitcoin than expected, relative to their advertised hashrate. For the foregoing reasons, HIVE will self-curtail part of its operations if the unhedged spot energy prices are uneconomical, thereby leaving part of its total gross hashrate unutilized.
All Bitcoin miners are striving to use the most efficient Bitcoin ASIC chips, and we are happy that we have been able to upgrade our global fleet during this crypto market downturn.
Sweden Datacenters Help Stabilize Electrical Grid During Major Blackout
On April 26, the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, was hit by a serious power outage. The consequences were great for several industries and subway and commuter train traffic came to a standstill. Hive's datacenters in northern Sweden assisted with more than 20 MW on demand response, able to power down, and thus help to quickly stabilize the electricity grid and help mitigate repercussions for the utility provider.