Core Scientific Sold More Bitcoin Than It Mined for Second Consecutive Month

Publicly traded Bitcoin miner Core Scientific experienced another net loss on its Bitcoin holdings last month. 

The firm sold 1,975 coins at an average price of $22,000 per Bitcoin in July, netting it proceeds of $44 million, according to a company announcement on Friday. Meanwhile, only 1,221 coins were mined.

This left just 1,205 Bitcoin and $83 million in cash on Core Scientific’s balance sheet as of July 31st. 

“Proceeds from bitcoin sales in July were primarily used to pay for capital investments related to increasing data center capacity,” the company explained. It also paid down debt to mining server manufacturer Bitmain for a 2021 order of 100,000 ASIC servers – the specialized machines used to competitively mine Bitcoin.

Less than $10 million in ASIC-related payments remain outstanding. 

Though the selloff has pulled Core Scientific’s total Bitcoin holdings even lower, it marks a relatively minor hit compared to the month prior. The firm sold a whopping 7,202 coins in June worth $165 million to “enhance liquidity,” as Bitcoin’s price crashed well below $30,000. Meanwhile, it only produced 1,106 coins.

The bear market has prompted many crypto mining companies to liquidate their Bitcoin holdings.

Core Scientific has also continued to scale operations. The company deployed another 14,000 ASIC servers in July, increasing its hash rate capacity to 19.3 exahashes per second (EH/s) – the largest capacity of any listed North American company. That equals 19.3 quintillion hashes per second, representing about one-tenth of Bitcoin’s total hash rate, according to Blockchain.com data. 

About 44% of the firm’s total hash rate was generated through colocation services, through which customers rent ASICs in Core Scientific’s data centers. The company signed colocation agreements with customers in July that are expected to generate $50 million in annual revenue. 

Core Scientific was one of the industrial-scale miners that paused operations in Texas to protect the grid during an overwhelming heatwave early last month. The firm curtailed 8,157 megawatt-hours on its own.

Some firms like Riot blockchain were financially compensated for their curtailment action as part of Texas’s demand response program available to Bitcoin miners. It earned $9.5 million – worth more than all of the Bitcoin it had self-mined in July. Core Scientific made no mention of receiving similar compensation.