bitcoinmagazine.com
Public bitcoin miner Core Scientific produced 1,077 BTC last month, a 315% increase year-over-year as its self-mining fleet reached 75,000 bitcoin mining rigs outputting 7.5 exahashes per second (EH/s) in hashrate capacity.
Core Scientific’s production increased slightly from December when it mined 1,044 bitcoin. The miner deposited all of the bitcoin it mined in January into custody; it held 6,373 bitcoin as of January 31, up from 5,296 BTC in the previous month.
In addition to operating its own mining farms, Core Scientific also provides hosting services to a group of customers that amount to 7.1 EH/s. In total, the miner operates over 14 EH/s of hashrate capacity.
Core Scientific mined more than 1,000 bitcoin for the second month in a row despite having powered down its mining operations once a week on average during January in response to weather conditions that put a strain on the grids used by the miner, CEO Mike Levitt said in a statement Monday.
“We are committed to curtailing mining activities to ensure the stability and performance of the electrical grids in our communities,” he added.
Big bitcoin miners often cooperate with state power grids to ensure a balance between supply and demand by being a baseload consumer that guarantees a stable demand for the grid’s energy. However, when an energy producer’s output is unable to match energy demand, miners often shut down part or all of their operations to ensure a stable grid.
Earlier this month, publicly listed bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain shut down most of its operations in Texas to save power as cold weather put up the biggest test of the state’s power grid since last year’s blackouts, according to a Bloomberg report.
Core Scientific said its electrical curtailments in January amounted to over 1,100 megawatt-hours (MWh) as it powered down a portion of its operations on four separate occasions.