The act of mining cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin is truly going global, including a recent announcement that Bitcoin mining has come to the Arctic circle. The surge in interest in cryptocurrencies has driven all types of challenges and solutions in generation of the digital money, including a global chip shortage that’s even hit China. Early adapters to Bitcoin are doing quite well, with those who would’ve invested $100 into the cryptocurrency in 2009 would see their initial investment worth over $48 million today. Along the way, the impact of the rapid rise in mainstream acceptance of Bitcoin and other crypto has driven even more interest towards opportunities to mine the digital currencies, such as those from Hello Pal International Inc. (CSE: HP) (OTCQB: HLLPF), Marathon Patent Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA), Riot Blockchain, Inc. (NASDAQ: RIOT), Canaan Inc. (NASDAQ: CAN), and HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (TSXV: HIVE) (OTC: HVBTF).
One strategy being implemented by Hello Pal International Inc. (CSE: HP) (OTCQB: HLLPF) is to leverage and utilize its rapidly growing userbase of more than over 5.4 million users from over 200 countries and regions to take part in the mining of the popular cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum.
By partnering with cryptomining company Yitang, Hello Pal’s rapidly growing social media platform’s users buy or option to purchase entire or fractional mining machines. Each machine will be personally identifiable to the purchasers, which differs greatly from the current ‘cloud mining’ services that are typically available on the market.
Through this process, these users can now simply participate in the Bitcoin and Ethereum mining with simplicity and convenience.
“It’s been our initiative for cryptocurrency to play a central part on our platform, especially given the borderless nature of cryptocurrency and our international nature,” said KL Wong, Founder and Chairman of Hello Pal. “The recent activity and interest in cryptocurrency presents us with a unique opportunity to introduce cryptocurrency to our users, as well as to bring cryptocurrency users to our platform.”
Users who partake in the mining opportunity will see their mined cryptocurrency be credited to their digital wallet each day. Hello Pal has kicked off the initiative itself by purchasing several Bitcoin and Ethereum mining machines to be held by the company, with plans to purchase even more.
Yitang is signed on to help Hello Pal reintroduce and revamp its digital wallet and proprieatary digital currency, “Palto”— a utility token to be used across the entire Hello Pal suite of apps in order to allow for the borderless transfer of value between Hello Pal users across the world.
Part of the Hello Pal advantage of its platform is its design that allows users to make new friends in countries all over the world. Among those countries is a massive market that most major social media platforms are blocked from operating within, namely Hello Pal has permission to operate both inside and outside of China.
Based out of Vancouver, Canada, Hello Pal also shares dev offices in China with livestream giant KK Livestream, which has its + 200 million userbase. By its actions so far, Hello Pal is quickly becoming a rising social media platform star, as evidenced by its recent setting of a new revenue record in January 2021 of nearly CAD$2.8 million, and a successful fully subscribed private placement of CAD$1.6 million.
“We are pleased our company is truly global, and will continue to rollout new products, features, to reach new markets,” said Hello Pal advisor, Hans Xu. “The Hello Pal platform is a truly diversified social platform”
One of the first cryptocurrency mining companies to be listed on the Nasdaq was Marathon Patent Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA). Some investors have chosen the company as a proxy or substitute for actually owning BTC, because the share price of MARA tends to follow the price of Bitcoin itself, at least for the most part.
Late last year, Marathon upped its presence in the crypto mining space, by adding an additional 10,000 S-19J Pro Asic Miners from Bitmain, and announced plans for a second data center.
“The new facility will be powered primarily by clean, renewable power, which is not only cost-effective, but will also allow us to lower our carbon footprint,” said Marathon’s CEO and Chairman, Merrick Okamoto. “Currently, we believe the costs to operate our second facility will be similar to the industry-leading rates we have at our Hardin facility: $0.028 per kWh for power and $0.006 per kWh for hosting operations.”
Upon its own increasing of mining capacity, Riot Blockchain, Inc. (NASDAQ: RIOT) saw shares of its stock jump as much as 25% as the company hit a new milestone. Amid the surging prices of BTC, Riot Blockchain was able to boast it had achieved a 1.06 Exahash per second (EH/s) mining rate with 2,002 new S19 Pro Antminers from Bitmain.
“Exceeding 1 EH/s in hash rate capacity marks a major milestone for the Company,” said Jason Les, CEO of Riot Blockchain. “While we are proud of this accomplishment, we view it as the successful completion of just one of many steps of our ongoing growth plan.”
The company now has a total of 11,542 Antminers in operation after its latest additions, leading to a nearly 26% increase in production over its prior operational hash rate.
Despite the recent resignation of its CFO for personal reasons, Canaan Inc. (NASDAQ: CAN) saw its shares rise amongst its cryptocurrency peers due to upbeat financial guidance. The company manufactures Bitcoin mining hardware, and has been running at capacity for quite some time now.
Canaan currently has preorders for over 100,000 Bitcoin-mining machines, which management says is its full capacity with its current manufacturing facilities.
One of their clients is HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (TSXV: HIVE) (OTC: HVBTF), which recently bought another 6,400 miners from the manufacturer—increasing its own capacity to 1,229 PH/s.
HIVE has stated that the equipment will be delivered over eight tranches throughout 2021, with 500 miners to be delivered in May and June, while another 900 miners will be delivered each month until year-end.
HIVE’s vision was to achieve an aggregate operating hash power of 1,000 PH/s by the end of calendar 2021. By securing these purchases, HIVE achieved this monumental goal faster than planned. Now the company is focused on new opportunities to increase its Bitcoin mining capacity, with a new goal of 2,000 PH/s by the end of 2021.
