Crypto Currents: CleanSpark acquires two bitcoin mining sites in Mississippi

As bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies get increasing attention from investors, Wall Street and its traditional banks continue to adjust to the shift. Catch up on this week’s top stories highlighting the intersection of these old guard and new school areas of finance with this recap compiled by The Fly.

CLEANSPARK ACQUIRES TWO BITCOIN MINING SITES: CleanSpark (CLSK) announced Tuesday it had acquired two bitcoin mining sites and associated land near Clinton, Mississippi, and closed on its second site in Wyoming. The Mississippi acquisitions have a combined purchase price of $5.775M and will support a total of 16.5 MW. The sites are currently partially complete and the purchase price includes the cost to complete construction of the site infrastructure. The site will be delivered to the company turnkey ready with an expected completion date of December 1, 2024. Upon completion and installation, the site will house S21 pro miners with an expected combined operating hashrate of approximately 1 exahashes per second. The addition of these sites will bring the company’s data center portfolio in Mississippi to 60.5 MW. On September 11, the company closed on its previously announced 45 MW site in Wyoming. The site is expected to contribute an additional 3 EH/s to the company’s hashrate upon completion. The site will feature immersion-cooled bitcoin mining data centers which will support the latest generation S21 immersion XPs.

“Including today’s announcement, our operational capacity has soared over the last seven days totaling 211.5 MW of new capacity. That’s an increase of nearly 38%, which will not only support our target of 37 EH/s by the end of 2024, but also our target of 50 EH/s in 2025,” said Zach Bradford, CEO. “CleanSpark’s rapid growth underscores our ongoing commitment to deliver long-term shareholder value.”

HUT 8 EXPANDS PARTNERSHIP WITH BITMAIN: On Thursday, Hut 8 Corp. (HUT) announced the expansion of its partnership with BITMAIN Technologies with the launch of the U3S21EXPH, a next-generation ASIC miner. Hut 8 plans to deploy the model in 2Q25 through a ~15 exahash per second hosting agreement leveraging custom data center infrastructure developed in-house by Hut 8. As part of its long-term, power-first strategy, Hut 8 continues to scale its compute layer across energy-intensive technologies, including both bitcoin mining and AI compute, with the aim of maximizing returns on its portfolio of power assets and digital infrastructure. The launch and commercialization of the U3S21EXPH is a key milestone in executing this strategy in the company’s bitcoin mining segment as it advances scaled opportunities in AI compute.

“Our partnership with BITMAIN has allowed us to advance our thinking on ASIC compute and create a more scalable model for data center design as we expand our footprint,” said Asher Genoot, CEO. “The U3S21EXPH will be the first miner from BITMAIN broadly commercialized with DLC cooling within a U form factor, making it rack-ready like traditional data center hardware. This innovation bridges critical engineering gaps between Bitcoin mining and AI data center infrastructure in both form factor and cooling technology, and we believe this convergence will enable us to unlock significant synergies and flexibility going forward.”

CANAAN INITIATED WITH BULLISH VIEW: B. Riley initiated coverage of Canaan (CAN) on Wednesday with a Buy rating and $2 price target. The analyst believes the company’s first-mover advantage as a digital mining hardware manufacturer has not waned and it is “poised to reverse course in an otherwise challenging mining hardware market backdrop.” Canaan’s research and development platform underpins its ability to keep pace with its larger competitors and opens the door for economies of scope over the long term, the analyst said.

ROBINHOOD PRICE TARGET RAISED: On Thursday, Piper Sandler raised the firm’s price target on Robinhood (HOOD) to $27 from $23 and kept an Overweight rating on the shares. The firm believes the passage of comprehensive crypto legislation in the U.S. is near and thinks Robinhood is well positioned to benefit if this occurs given its relatively conservative crypto offering that can be expanded quickly and a younger customer demographic with an appetite to adopt new crypto products. Bottom line, Piper estimates about 10%-12% EPS upside to Robinhood earnings if the company were to expand its crypto offering to something comparable to crypto native peers.

HIVE DIGITAL STARTED AT OUTPERFORM: Northland initiated coverage of Hive Digital (HIVE) on Thursday with an Outperform rating and $5.50 price target. Hive, which operates with a diversified growth strategy that balances bitcoin mining, GPU rental, and high-performance computing, recently announced a 100 MW hydroelectric data center in Paraguay that is expected to boost its hashrate to about 13.5 EH/s in 2025, the analyst said. Hive has navigated market downturns to acquire equipment at lower prices and has maintained low G&A costs per BTC, “solidifying its status as one of the industry’s most cost-effective operators,” according to the analyst, who views Hive as having proven its ability to maximize output from its mining equipment while keeping overhead low.

CRYPTO STOCK PLAYS: Publicly traded companies in the space include Bit Digital (BTBT), Coinbase (COIN), Core Scientific (CORZ), Greenidge Generation (GREE), Marathon Digital (MARA), MicroStrategy (MSTR), Riot Platforms (RIOT), Stronghold Digital Mining (SDIG) and TeraWulf (WULF).

PRICE ACTION: As of time of writing, bitcoin rose about 4% this week to $62,871 in U.S. dollars, according to CoinDesk.