Iris Energy has reported a 10% increase in bitcoin production during August 2024, with the company mining 245 bitcoin. The improvement is attributed to higher operational efficiency and reduced electricity costs following the company’s transition to spot pricing.
Iris Energy’s Bitcoin Mining Efficiency Leads to Output Growth
In its August 2024 investor update, Iris Energy (Nasdaq: IREN) highlighted a rise in operational hashrate to 10.94 petahash per second (PH/s), compared to 9.01 PH/s in July. The company credited the production boost to optimized electricity pricing strategies at its Childress site, which resulted in electricity costs per bitcoin dropping to $29,958 from $61,677 in the previous month.
Iris stated that despite increased network difficulty, this operational efficiency helped offset rising costs, leading to a notable improvement in overall revenue. Bitcoin’s mining difficulty ticked up by 2.99% on Aug. 28, adding to the pressure miners felt throughout August as the network’s hashprice slipped as well. Despite the low hashprice, Iris’s mining revenue reached nearly $15 million in August, up from $13.6 million in July.
Looking ahead, Iris disclosed that the firm projects further increases in its mining capacity, targeting an installed hashrate of 30 exahash per second (EH/s) by the end of the fourth quarter of 2024. The company also expects significant scaling in its artificial intelligence (AI) cloud services segment, supported by the deployment of 816 Nvidia H100 GPUs. Even with this announcement, Iris’s shares have dropped this past week, falling 12.7% over the past five days.
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