Riot Blockchain is hoarding $194 million worth of Bitcoin

The company is accumulating newly-mined Bitcoin instead of choosing to sell it

Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining enterprise Riot Blockchain announced via a press release that it currently owns 3,534 bitcoins, worth about $195 million.

The company revealed that it produced a majority of the Bitcoins issued this year with a total of 2,457 BTC (worth over $135 million) mined this year up to and during September.  

Riot’s move to hold rather than sell Bitcoin has strengthened the argument that mining companies are seeking to accumulate the world’s number one cryptocurrency in large numbers.

Riot has tripled its year-to-date Bitcoin production from 2020, marking a 246% increase in mining in 2021. It generated 406 bitcoins in September 2021, more than four times the 91 bitcoins that the company mined in September 2020.

Riot stated that despite the stellar performance in September 2021, it has no plans of selling its newly mined Bitcoin. The company also confirmed that it has mined every Bitcoin it owns.

This prompted a response from MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor who said that “Publicly traded Bitcoin miners aren't selling Bitcoin, they are accumulating Bitcoin. The game has changed.”

With over 25,000 miners, the company has a total hash rate capacity of 2.6 exahashes per second (EH/s). However, this is only expected to improve as Riot is looking to deploy an additional mining fleet of 2,000 Bitmain Antminer S19Js in the next month. This will increase its total has rate capacity to 2.8 EH/s, the company stated.

Riot acknowledged that the Whitestone Facility in Texas is progressing at a rapid speed and will have its fourth 100 MW power transformer substation installed by December 2021. It is also expecting another 4,000 Antminer S19Js to be shipped from Bitmain Malaysia by the end of this month.  

Explaining its goals for the future, the company said that “By Q4 2022, Riot anticipates a self-mining total hash rate capacity of 7.7 EH/s”, adding that investors can expect full deployment of approximately 81,150 Antminers by then.