Compass Mining to add 25,000 ASIC miners just weeks after staff cuts

Mere weeks after announcing staff lay-offs and salary cuts, Compass Mining has unveiled expansion plans in the form of a 75 megawatt (MW) hosting partnership with Compute North for its data center in Granbury, Texas.

The announcement on Thursday comes only two weeks after the company retrenched 15% of its employees and implemented salary cuts for its top executives as a means to weather difficult market conditions.

It also follows the resignation of key executives including CEO Whit Gibbs and chief finance officer Jodie Fisher in late June, as well as losing one of its Maine-based hosting facilities after allegedly missing payments relating to utility bills and hosting fees.

Compass said the newest large-scale deployment will begin in August and continue for several months.

The expansion includes plans to deploy 25,000 application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners to the existing Wolf Hollow plant site in Granbury, including a variety of next-generation Bitcoin miners.

According to Compass, the facility is state of the art and powered by a 1.1 gigawatt (GW) combined cycle natural gas-fueled plant, which uses advanced gas turbine designs and air cooling to decrease carbon emissions and water dependence.

The data center also has a fully curtailable load and can shut down at a moment’s notice should the draw on the grid exceed capacity.

This adds to existing Compass facilities across the United States, Canada and Iceland, with major operations in Texas, Ontario, New Mexico and Florida.

Crypto miners in Texas, however, have had a difficult month as a result of a record-breaking heatwave in the state, which has caused a strain on the energy grid.

Major Bitcoin miners have been working with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) by temporarily shutting down or severely reducing their operations in the state to reduce the toll on the grid.

Crypto mining firms are still coming to Texas in droves though, attracted by less regulatory oversight and lower energy costs.

Mining stocks hit one-month high

Despite the recent heatwave impacting local mining operations, publicly listed mining stocks appear to be performing well, according to NASDAQ data.

Three of the biggest miners by market cap are all in the green as of Friday.

Marathon Digital Holdings Inc has seen a 99.85% increase in its stock price over the past month, while Riot Blockchain Inc is up 65.65% and Canaan Inc is up 42.27% over the past month.

It comes as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) has also reached a one-month high, reaching $22,938 at the time of writing.