Bitcoin Mining Firm Iris Energy Receives $103M Default Notice

• The company’s average mining hash rate in October was 3.9 EH/s.
• As it stands, the company looks to have fallen on hard times due to a confluence of factors.

Bitcoin (BTC) miner Iris Energy reports it has received a default notice from mining equipment maker Bitmain Technologies, according to a new filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday.

The notification said that some principal payments due on November 8 were not subject to “good faith restructuring discussions” since Iris Energy had not participated in them. Creditors also claimed in a second letter sent to Iris Energy last week that, if not addressed within 10 days, the company would be in default for having “failed to maintain sufficient insurance.”

Confluence of Factors

Despite having its headquarters in Australia, Iris Energy is more recognized for the Canadian Bitcoin mining facilities it has operated using only renewable energy sources. The company’s average mining hash rate in October was 3.9 EH/s, which is equivalent to around 1.5% of the whole Bitcoin network’s mining capacity.

According to Iris Energy, the equipment financing loans amounting to $1 million, $32 million, and $71 million are all in dispute. These loans are collateralized by 0.2 EH/s, 1.6 EH/s, and 2.0 EH/s of Bitcoin miners, respectively. The company claims that its data center capacity and development pipeline, totaling 2.4 EH/s of miners, are unaffected by the notice.

As it stands, the company looks to have fallen on hard times due to a confluence of factors, including high power costs, falling Bitcoin prices, and rising network difficulty. The company reported that its gross profit is just $2 million per month under present circumstances, significantly below the monthly principal and interest payments of $7 million. This is despite possessing $53 million in cash and producing over $8.7 million in sales per month.