German company Northern Data has agreed to acquire Bitfield, a mining firm, in a deal that will secure at least an 86% stake and indirectly gain about 33,000 ASIC miners.<\/p>\n
According to press release<\/a>, 6,600 devices are already installed and operating in Northern Data’s data centres.<\/p>\n Deployment of the 26,000 additional miners already on hand is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2022, largely at sites in North America.<\/p>\n At the time of the deal, Bitfield’s hashrate was about 0.7 EH\/s. After commissioning, the figure will be roughly 3 EH\/s.<\/p>\n Computing capacity under Northern Data’s management, including hosting clients, will reach approximately 6 EH\/s.<\/p>\n The deal is structured as an exchange of shares worth \u20ac400 million and contemplates the issue of up to 5.1 million Northern Data shares.<\/p>\n The German firm\u2019s business includes hosting services for mining equipment, its own Bitcoin and altcoin mining operations, and cloud computing.<\/p>\n It is expected that the Bitfield acquisition will support vertical integration and value creation in mining, aligned with its ESG (ESG<\/a>).<\/p>\n “The company intends to use the free cash flow generated by the deal to invest in further growth. This will include increasing the number of ASIC miners and GPU-server systems, expanding data centre infrastructure and creating new facilities,” the press release states.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The management expects 2021 revenue of \u20ac180-\u20ac220 million and pre-tax profit of \u20ac100-\u20ac125 million.<\/p>\n In 2019, Northern Data acquired the American company Whinstone US, which was building a Texas data centre for Bitcoin mining with a capacity of 1 GW. One of its early residents was SBI Holdings\u2019 subsidiary mining operation.<\/p>\n As reported in October 2020, Arcane Research found that Chinese miners’ dominance was gradually decreasing<\/a> due to growth in computing power in other countries, including the United States.<\/p>\n In May 2021, Chinese authorities announced that they intended to take measures<\/a> against the industry. In the following month, governments in several regions ordered miners to cease operations<\/a>.<\/p>\n Researchers from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance found that the share of Chinese miners in the hash rate had fallen below 50%<\/a> as early as March 2021, prior to the crackdown on the industry.<\/p>\n\n