Riot Blockchain (RIOT) continued to raise cash by selling Bitcoin (BTC), giving away more than half of the Bitcoins it mined in May.
- One of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners, Riot mined 466 bitcoins in May, down about 8% from April but more than twice as much as a year earlier. The company sold 250 bitcoins in May, taking in about $7.5 million, an implied price of about $30,000 each.
- It is the third consecutive month of bitcoin sales for the previously confirmed Hodler, as the company also sold 250 bitcoins in April and 200 in March. Given the near-continuous decline in the bitcoin price of late, those sales brought in $10 million and $9.4 million, respectively, up from $7.5 million in May.
- At the end of May, Riot still had about 6,536 bitcoin on its balance sheet.
- With the bear market still in effect in both traditional finance and the crypto economy, capital markets are becoming unfriendly, and Riot is hardly the only miner making money by selling its mined bitcoin.
- Looking at production details, Riot said it currently has about 43,458 miners online, with a hash rate capacity of 4.6 exahash per second (EH/s), and expects to reach 5.4 EH/s soon after deploying about 7,000 more rigs.
- The company has lowered its 2023 hash rate forecast to 12.6 EH/s, which assumes the deployment of 116,150 mining rigs. This is down from its previous forecast of 12.8 EH/s and 120,150 rigs.
- Riot's shares are down 70% this year, in line with other companies such as Marathon Digital (MARA) and Core Scientific (CORZ).