Poolin First to Launch Bitmain’s Hydro-Cooling Products in North America
| Olusegun Ogundeji
Poolin mining pool has disclosed it is building two data centers that have been under construction in Texas where Bitmain’s S19 PRO+ water-cooled miners are being used. The use of the hydro-cooling products makes Poolin, which also provides cryptocurrency mining services, the first to run a fully operational water-cooled data center in North America.
With a total load of 600MW expected to hash rat ee by June 2022 (the first phase of 100MW completed in March 2022), the centers on 145 acres are equipped with Antspace HK3 hydro cooling container system that contains about 47,000 Antminer hydro cooling miners.
According to Kevin Pan, the founder of Poolin, the hydro cooling products are safe, and silent and protect miners from external factors. “I believe this will be a solution for large-scale open the rations to access cheap energy and create a more environmentally-friendly mining industry,” he said.
Miners’ 2022 projections off target
Poolin’s disclosure comes as crypto data analytics firm, Glassnode reports that Bitcoin miners have been net distributors since the recent sell-off. It says miners’ balances have declined of late at a peak rate of 5,000 to 8,000 BTC per month ($150 million to $240 million at $30,000/BTC) while their spending slowed in the first week of June to 3,300 BTC/mth.
With Bitcoin prices now trading at the lower end of the 2021-22 cycle, Glassnode notes that almost all investors from the last 18-months are holding unrealized losses and miners, too, are feeling the heat as revenues have dropped by 56% while production cost has risen by 132% since the all-time-high. We are seeing miners distributing $BTC from their reserves, the firm notes, adding on June 9 that the Bitcoin hash ribbons have started to signal inversion – an indication that hash rate is starting to come offline meaning there is stress on miner incomes.
Luxor Mining, which regularly provides industry-related analysis, data, and hash rate insights, shares a similar view in its weekly report. It notes that public Bitcoin miners have not been adding hash rate as quickly as they had projected last year but have rather been trimming their end of year forecasts and selling Bitcoin to cover up. These measures particularly affect public miners who leveraged very low-interest rates to finance loans or took advantage of the past year’s bull market to fundraise with equity offerings for their 2021 expansions – all based on the year’s macroeconomic conditions and Bitcoin mining profitability models.
Miners devise coping mechanisms
Now, hashprice in USD has been cut by more than half from 2021’s average, there is inflation on raw materials and energy, and 2022’s macro and mining economic environment is constraining hash rate growth, Luxor Mining states. Hence, most Bitcoin mining stocks have been losing at least half of their value in 2022 forcing some of them to sell down their holdings to ensure cash flows without acquiring more debt or diluting equity. Core Scientific has reportedly sold off 1,600 BTC while Riot, Cathedra, and Argo, are selling down their treasuries – there may be other public miners who are doing the same but not making a disclosure.
Miners who took out BTC-collateralized loans against portions of their BTC treasuries (like Bitfarms and Argo which lend through Galaxy Digital and Genesis) in the bull market now have to add more BTC collateral to their loans to avoid a margin call and liquidation as the prices of Bitcoin has dropped.