Iris Energy (NASDAQ: IREN) is the latest public mining firm laying the groundwork to expand bitcoin mining hashrate to the 20 EH/s level.
The company said on Tuesday that it has purchased an additional 1 EH/s of Bitmain’s Antminer T21s while securing an option to buy up to another 9.1 EH/s, which is exercisable in the second half of this year at a fixed price of $14/TH/s.
Iris Energy has about 5.6 EH/s of installed hashrate as of Dec. 31 with a realized hashrate of 5.58 EH/s. With the latest purchase, Iris Energy has an additional 5.3 EH/s on order that is expected to ship within the first half of this year, racing against other competitors ahead of the halving.
The company said previously that it has secured enough funding through equity financing to pay for the hardware capital expenditure. If it fully exercises the option, Iris Energy could expand its mining fleet to 20 EH/s with an efficiency of 21.9 J/TH, although that likely won’t be fully operational until at least 2025.
Since the New Year, multiple mining companies such as CleanSpark, Stronghold Digital, and Cipher Mining have continued doubling down on hardware purchases while securing options to aim for potential growth later this year.
