An ether mining firm is acquiring a bitcoin mining facility for $2.8M

HIVE Blockchain Technologies, a Canada-based publicly-traded ether (ETH) mining firm, is diversifying into bitcoin mining operations.

Announcing the news on Monday, HIVE said it is acquiring a 30 megawatts (MW) bitcoin mining facility from Cryptologic Corp for about CA$ 4 million (~US$2.8 million) in Quebec.

HIVE currently has ether mining facilities in Sweden and Iceland. The firm said the acquisition would more than double its total available power capacity globally to approximately 50 MW.

“This is an important strategic acquisition for HIVE that diversifies our business significantly, and we are making it at an opportune time at an attractive valuation for our shareholders,” said Frank Holmes, interim executive chairman of HIVE. “The acquisition provides us with an advanced, operating Bitcoin mining facility ready to transition to next generation mining hardware with access to some of the lowest cost electricity on the planet. The cost of US$95,000 per MW is less than half the industry standard build cost per MW.”

In a separate announcement, Cryptologic Corp said it is selling all the shares of its wholly-owned subsidiary Quebec Inc. to HIVE. The 30 MW facility includes approximately 14,000 Bitmain S9 miners.

HIVE said due to the facility’s low electricity prices, these miners generate positive gross mining margins under current market conditions.

The acquisition remains subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of regulatory approvals. It is expected to close on the date that is the later of April 3 and the date that is two business days after the date that the TSX Venture Exchange provides conditional approval of the transaction, per the announcement.

The news comes at a time when bitcoin's mining difficulty, an indicator of competition among bitcoin miners, has seen the second-largest decline in the network’s history.