Happy New Year from the Blockspace Media team!

For today’s newsletter, a roundup of data points from public bitcoin miner Q3 financials, and a number of news items across blockspace.

Brought to you by The Texas Blockchain Council

The Texas Blockchain Council and the Digital Chamber are partnering with renowned economist Dr. Ray Perryman on a Bitcoin Mining Economic Impact Study. This study will provide critical insights into Bitcoin mining job creation, infrastructure investment, and community development across the U.S. The research group has an open call for data submissions to help inform the modeling (the TBC nor the DC will ever see the raw data). Please send all information directly to the Perryman group by December 31, 2024: [email protected] 

Top bitcoin miners spent $700 million on M&A in 2024

We’re in the final days of 2024, and with Q3 numbers in for public bitcoin miners, we have a clearer picture for how these companies have fared in 2024’s bull market.

In short, 2024 has been a banner year. 

This is particularly true when we take a look at the massive expansions – both from greenfield development and acquisitions – leading public miners have undertaken so far this year. Of course, all of this growth comes at a cost, namely in the vein of dilution via at-the-market offerings. 

Public bitcoin miner revenues near $1 billion in Q3 2024

Bitcoin miners are doing their best to shore up their revenues following the 2024 Halving.

Bitcoin’s price didn’t make its historic run from ~$60,000 to $100,000 until November and December, so miners didn’t enjoy any meaningful change to hashprice over Q3 (the average hashprice for the quarter was $45.27/PH/day, a sight worse than the price of $61.45/PH/day at the time of writing).

Only a handful of miners were able to eke out more revenue in Q3 than they did in Q2. In Q2, they had 19 days of mining rewards under the prior epoch’s block reward of 6.25, which was enough to make a meaningful impact on their bottom lines. Couple this with the rapid increase to Bitcoin’s difficulty despite the Halving, and the reduction in revenue quarter-over-quarter makes sense. 

PP&E, M&A spending top $3.9 billion in 2024

As they compete with the rest of the network for revenue, public miners are pouring cash into expansion.

Looking at property, plant, and equipment spending for the first 9 months of 2024 (including prepayments and deposits for mining hardware and infrastructure), leading public bitcoin miners spent a whopping $3.19 billion.

IREN led the pack here in its quest for the most efficient fleet in the sector (as of the first week in December, IREN’s fleet efficiency is 15 J/TH, the lowest of any public miner). 

Outside of PP&E, there’s been a flurry of M&A dealflow in 2024. The public bitcoin miners in our analysis have spent $719 million on M&A so far this year. For MARA, Cleanspark, Riot, and Cipher the M&A consisted of bitcoin mining sites; for Hut 8, its acquisition of a natural gas power plant, Far North; and for Bit Digital, the HPC business, Enovum.

Public miners rake in roughly $6 billion in equity, debt financing in first three quarters of 2024

To finance their expansion, public miners have been raising capital – and a helluva lot of it.

In the first nine months of 2024, the top public miners have raised $4.8 billion from equity offerings, largely in the form of at-the-market offerings, and $1.14 billion in debt financing, the vast majority of which are convertible notes. (Depending on the structure and payment, convertible notes can also lead to dilution down the road).

As reported by The Miner Mag, public miners have been even more aggressive in debt markets so far in Q4, upping the total raised since June to some $5 billion.

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