Key Takeaways
- Riot’s Bitcoin mining revenue jumped 55.4% year-on-year to $74.6 million.
- Riot is suffering from lower Bitcoin production and increased mining cost
Leading Bitcoin Mining Company, Riot Platforms, released its Q1 2024 results on May 1st, showcasing a financially mixed quarter. The company achieved a record net income of $211.8 million, marking a 1,000% increase year-over-year.
The high net income is owing to the surge in Bitcoin prices during the quarter. Riot’s Bitcoin mining revenue jumped 55.4% year-on-year to $74.6 million. Despite this growth, lower Bitcoin production (down 36% compared to Q1 2023) and increased mining costs partially offset these gains. The rise in mining costs was attributed to a 144% increase in the average cost per mined Bitcoin (to $23,000), primarily driven by an 89% increase in the global network hash rate.
“We are encouraged by the significant increase in net income,” said Riot CEO Jason Les. “This reflects the benefits of rising Bitcoin prices and our ongoing expansion efforts.” The company produced 1,364 tokens, down 36% compared with 2023’s first quarter. The cost to mine Bitcoin surged to $23,034 per token from $9,438 in the same period in 2023.
Despite the production dip, Riot remains optimistic about the future. The company recently announced a new facility in Texas, aiming to be the world’s largest dedicated Bitcoin mining facility upon completion. This expansion is expected to increase Riot’s hash rate capacity from 12.4 exahashes per second (EH/s) to 31 EH/s by the end of 2024.
They further anticipate reaching 41 EH/s when the Texas facility fully deploys in 2025, with a long-term goal of reaching 100 EH/s by 2027. Riot has the third-largest hash rate among miners, standing only behind Marathon Digital (24.7 EH/s) and Core Scientific (16.9 EH/s).
This news arrives amidst ongoing adjustments for Bitcoin miners following the April 2024 halving event, which cut the block reward for mining new Bitcoins from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. The halving which is at its core a software-code update has made life harder for miners as it is expected to drastically reduce revenues and further improve production costs simultaneously. While Bitcoin prices increased in the first quarter, production of new coins took a severe fall as mining difficulty, surged in the same period.
