Riot Blockchain Rebrands to Riot Platforms Mid Mining Rout

Bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain has changed its name to Riot Platforms to reflect a more diversified business.

In a press release, the company announced that despite the name change, it will continue to trade under the RIOT ticker symbol on Nasdaq.

Riot Self-Mining Hashrate May Reach 12.5 EH/s by Q1 2023

The rebranding announcement comes about a year and a half after the company closed a deal to buy a Rockdale, Texas Bitcoin hosting facility owned by Whinstone US. Riot also agreed to acquire electrical equipment manufacturer ESS Metron seven months later.

“The scale and scope of our businesses continue to expand, and this rebranding better reflects our position as strategic allocators of capital to increasingly expand the scope of our Bitcoin operations,” said CEO Jason Les.

Whinstone and Riot will operate under the Riot Platforms business unit, while ESS Metron will continue to operate under its existing name due to customer familiarity with the brand.

Riot’s financial and operational updates for the third quarter of 2022 revealed lower Bitcoin production in the quarter, due to the company’s power restriction strategy and a lower BTC price. Bitcoin fell 60% in 2022 and is currently down 75% from its November 2021 all-time high of around $69,000.

Riot hopes to achieve a self-mining hashrate capacity of 12.5 Exahashes/second if it successfully deploys 115,450 Antminer ASICs by Q1 2023 and receives no production boost from its 200MW immersion cooling infrastructure.

Miners return equipment to clear debt

More miners are filing for bankruptcy or returning ASICs because they cannot service debts incurred during previous Bitcoin bull markets. ASICs are purpose-built mining computers that miners use to solve a cryptographic puzzle necessary to broadcast a block of transactions to the Bitcoin network and earn Bitcoin.

In the early stages of the cryptomining industry, borrowers often dictated the terms of loan agreements. As a result, most mining companies offered ASICs as collateral, making these machines the primary means by which lenders could recoup their investments if miners faced insolvency.

With Bitcoin countered on several fronts, including recession threats in the US and a general unease regarding the crypto industry following the collapse of several major crypto entities, some miners facing declining BTC revenues have returned ASICs to their lenders. In some cases, return machines cost less than paying off a loan.

Sydney-based Iris Energy and Stronghold Digital Mining chose to return machines to erase their debt, while Greenidge Generation Holdings signed a non-binding term to sell its units to lender NYDIG. NYDIG will reduce Greenidge’s debt by taking ownership of the machines that Greenidge will now host.

Argo Blockchain recently sold its entire Texas facility to mining company Galaxy Digital for $65 million to stave off bankruptcy.

Texas miner Core Scientific was able to collect $2 million monthly from the shutdown of around 37,000 ASICs belonging to bankrupt lender Celsius Network. Core Scientific filed for bankruptcy in December 2022.

The Texas-based miner had previously asked a court to uphold a previous hosting agreement between itself and Celsius that forced the defunct lender to cover rising energy costs. The lender, itself in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, has not made the required payments, prompting Core to shut down the machines.

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