Bitfarm's New Financing Deal With BlockFi
Global self-mining Bitcoin company Bitfarms (NASDAQ: BITF) announced last week that they had entered into a $32M financing deal with crypto-financial services company BlockFi. Under the terms of the agreement, Bitfarms entered into a two-year, 14.5% interest rate, equipment loan for the purchase of 6,100 Bitmain S19j Pro miners.
Bitfarms, one of the first publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies in North America, has adopted a growth-oriented focus. From 2016 to 2022, Bitfarms has gone from mining in a garage to operating 7 large-scale mining farms across 3 different countries. They currently operate 5 mining centers in Quebec, 1 in Washington state (U.S.), and, as of last month, 1 in Villarica, Paraguay. They have plans to expand operations in Quebec and add an additional center in Córdoba, Argentina. According to recent reports, these expansions would bring their total capacity to 394MW and their total hashrate to 8 EH/s by the end of 2022.
Their growth-oriented strategy has paid off. In a January operations update, Bitfarms CEO Emiliano Grodzki said “I’m pleased to report that January 2022 production of 301 BTC represents an increase of 51% from January 2021. This strong year-over-year increase validates our growth model.”
According to Bitfarms CFO Jeff Lucas, the newly announced financing deal will free up capital that can be put toward continued growth. “This equipment financing agreement provides another source of non-dilutive capital, enabling us to finance equipment from our established mining operations so that we can invest growth capital into miner purchases and our new farms under construction,” said Lucas. Of particular strategic importance is finishing construction of their facility in Argentina, which is projected to provide an additional capacity of 210MW.
The finance provider, BlockFi, is pleased with the direction Bitfarms has taken. "We are pleased to partner with Bitfarms on this transaction. Our goal is to support our client's working capital needs and provide them with financial leverage for future growth,” said Patrick Guerriero, Director of Miner Finance at BlockFi.