Riot Blockchain Reports A 460% Increase in Hash Rate; Doubles the Bitcoin Held on Balance Sheet

Bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ: RIOT) reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of last year and the full year ended Dec. 31, 2020. Castle Rock, a Colorado-headquartered company, had its Q4 mining revenues increased by 116% to $5.2 million compared to 2.4 million in Q3 of the same year. Compared to $3.4 million in net loss in 4Q19 and $1.7 million loss in 3Q20, 4Q20 had $3.9 million in income on a GAAP basis. The company reported a net loss of $12.7 million for the entire year, or $(0.30) per share, down from $20.03 million in the previous year. This loss included impairment of $9.4 million investment in Coinsquare along with depreciation and stock-based compensation. While G&A expenses only rose by 14%, working capital increased by over 2,000% to $233.9 million on a year-over-year basis. “2020 was a transformative year for Riot, and we believe that the Company’s prospects have never been brighter,” said Jason Les, Riot’s CEO. This year, the company will focus on increasing the US’s share in the bitcoin mining landscape.

More Increment

As Riot’s hashing capacity surged by 460% (YOY), so did the mined 303 BTC in Q4 compared to 222 BTC in the previous quarter, an increase of 36% thanks to the hash rate increase. The firm’s current hash rate capacity is approximately 1.3 EH/s utilizing 43 MW of power with an efficiency of 32.4 joules per terahash (J/TH) which they will work on growing. Increased deployed hash rate capacity to 566 PH/s is a 460% increase from 101 PH/s from the previous year. The company reported an investment in 33,646 Bitmain S19, S19 Pro, and S19j Pro Antminers, which are expected to be fully installed by the Q4 of 2021 and achieve an estimated aggregate bitcoin mining hash rate capacity of 4.0 EH/s. As for its strategic priorities in 2021, it will “successfully execute” the disclosed miner purchase orders of 35,146 Bitmain S19 generation Antminers. During this year, they have deployed 6,703 Bitmain S19 Pro Antminers. The Bitcoin held on the balance sheet also more than doubled to 1,078 BTC. On Dec. 31, 2020, the Company had $235 million in cash and cryptocurrencies, as compared to $11.3 million at the end of last year. Total stockholder’s equity recorded a significant increment to $277.1 million from $26.2 million last year.