Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms hash rate booms 50% in June

Bitcoin mining firm Riot Platforms increased its deployed hash rate by 50% in June, helping it mine 255 Bitcoin (BTC) — a near-20% increase from May.

Riot’s hash rate increased from 14.7 exahashes per second to 22 EH/s over the month after it completed miner installations at its Corsicana facility and tapped into additional available capacity at its Rockdale Facility.

In a July 3 statement, Riot’s CEO Jason Les, described June as a “historic month” as the firm managed to exceed its mid-year deployed hashrate target of 21.4 EH/s. The energization of these miners primarily took place in the last few days of June.

Riot held all Bitcoin that it mined in June, bringing its total Bitcoin stash to 9,334 — worth $561.6 million at current prices.

The 255 Bitcoin — worth $15.3 million — was down 45% year-on-year due to the halving event slicing the block subsidy by 50% on April 20.

Riot is now the second largest Bitcoin miner by hash rate, surpassing CleanSpark and Core Scientific which have also reported hash rates above 20 EH/s.

Riot now only trails Marathon Digital at 31.5 EH/s.

Hash rate refers to the total combined computational power that is being used to mine transactions on proof-of-work networks like Bitcoin.

Riot said it is on track to increase its total self-mining hash rate capacity to 31.5 EH/s before 2024’s end.

It is targeting 100 EH/s by 2027 or shortly after, which it anticipates could be reached should it fully exercise its option to purchase more MicroBT’s in the future.