Bitcoin mining firm TeraWulf orders new machines, cost estimated at nearly $100 million

U.S.-based bitcoin mining firm TeraWulf, which recently announced its plans to go public via a reverse merger, has ordered 30,000 new mining machines from Bitmain.

Bitmain announced the news on Tuesday, saying that the order is for Antminer S19j Pro machines, the latest generation miner. The order cost is estimated at nearly $100 million, according to The Block's calculations. One Antminer S19j Pro is priced at about $3,000 for future orders versus a spot order price of around $7,000.

Bitmain said it would deliver the 30,000 machines to TeraWulf from January to June 2022. When fully deployed, these machines are expected to increase TeraWulf's total hashrate by three exahashes per second (EH/s) — around 3% of bitcoin's hashrate. The firm's current hashrate is unknown, but it appears to have lofty goals.

Last week, TeraWulf announced a reverse merger plan with Nasdaq-listed imaging technology company IKONICS Corporation to go public in the U.S. At the time, the firm said it would order 60,000 mining machines and expects to have 50 megawatts (MW) of power capacity online this year. By 2025, the firm said it expects to have 800 MW of deployed mining capacity and over 23 EH/s of hashrate.

TeraWulf also claims to be an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG)-focused bitcoin mining firm and says it will use over 90% zero-carbon energy for its operations. The firm says it has a target of utilizing 100% zero-carbon energy in the future.