Iris Energy boosts Bitcoin mining output by 10%

Iris Energy, a Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) mining company, has announced a 10% increase in its Bitcoin production for August 2024, reaching a total of 245 BTC mined.

This growth is mainly due to improved operational efficiency and a switch to spot electricity pricing, which reduced costs significantly.

In its latest investor update, Iris Energy shared that its operational hashrate rose to 10.94 petahash per second (PH/s) from 9.01 PH/s in July.

The company’s optimized electricity strategy at its Childress site lowered the cost of electricity per Bitcoin to $29,958, compared to $61,677 the previous month.

This approach helped the company to balance out the impact of the increasing network difficulty, ultimately boosting overall revenue.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty increased by 2.99% on August 28, putting additional strain on miners as the network's hashprice also saw a decline.

However, Iris Energy still managed to grow its mining revenue to nearly $15 million in August, up from $13.6 million in July.

This was achieved through effective cost controls and operational strategies, demonstrating the company’s resilience in a challenging environment.

Looking to the future, Iris Energy aims to expand its mining capabilities with a target hashrate of 30 exahash per second (EH/s) by the end of Q4 2024.

The company is also planning to scale its artificial intelligence (AI) cloud services, supported by the installation of 816 Nvidia H100 GPUs.

Despite these forward-looking plans, Iris Energy’s stock price dropped 12.7% in the past week, reflecting the unpredictable nature of the market.

These advancements illustrate Iris Energy's commitment to optimizing its mining processes and diversifying into new technology sectors, even as the Bitcoin mining sector navigates a period of uncertainty and market fluctuations.

At the time of writing, the Bitcoin (BTC) price was $56,642.06.