Key Points
- Bitcoin miner Core Scientific reported a net income of $210 million in Q1 2024, a significant rise from the net loss of $0.4 million in the same quarter last year.
- The company plans to leverage its infrastructure for AI operations, in addition to its Bitcoin mining activities.
Bitcoin mining company Core Scientific announced a net income of $210 million for the first quarter of 2024. This is a substantial increase compared to the net loss of $0.4 million in the same quarter the previous year.
The company’s first-quarter revenue reached $179.3 million. This includes $150 million from Bitcoin mining and $29.3 million from hosting services.
Core Scientific’s Performance in Q1 2024
By the end of Q1 2024, Core Scientific had cash and cash equivalents of $98.1 million on its balance sheet. This is nearly double the $50.4 million it had in Q4 2023.
During this quarter, Core Scientific mined 2,285 Bitcoins. This is the highest number among all publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies in North America. The value of these Bitcoins, based on the current price of Bitcoin, is $172.5 million.
The company reported a total hash rate of 25.5 exahashes per second (EH/s). This includes 19.3 EH/s for self-mining and 6.2 EH/s for hosting services.
Core Scientific owns and oversees approximately 745 megawatts of infrastructure. This makes it the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner in North America.
CEO Adam Sullivan disclosed that the company is discussing with customers about converting more than 500 megawatts into high-performance computing capabilities. This would enable the company to operate in the computing and Bitcoin mining markets simultaneously.
Repurposing Bitcoin Mining Infrastructure for AI
Core Scientific plans to repurpose its Bitcoin mining infrastructure for high computing applications such as AI operations. The company has already deployed a 16-megawatt data center capacity for an AI startup.
This move follows the latest Bitcoin halving, which reduced miner revenue from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. This resulted in an annual revenue loss of $10 billion for Bitcoin miners.
In response, Core Scientific and other Bitcoin mining companies are looking to capitalize on the AI boom. They are repurposing some of their assets to provide services to AI companies, which have high computational requirements.
Other Bitcoin miners like Marathon Digital are planning to double their Bitcoin mining capacity. Marathon has increased its hash rate target for 2024 from the previously planned 35-37 exahashes per second (EH/s) to a new goal of 50 EH/s.
