Gary A. Vecchiarelli, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Bitcoin (BTC) mining company CleanSpark, explained on December 17 that the company prefers to allocate resources to increase its mining capacity, rather than to buy BTC above $100,000.
According to the sayings According to executive Vecchiarelli, this company sees access to BTC as a more attractive option by “investing in our ability to mine it for a production price below $40,000.”
At the beginning of November 2024, CriptoNoticias reported that CleanSpark was one of the mining companies that had the lowest average production cost, with a figure of almost $34,000 per BTC.
CleanSpark establishes a different strategy than its competitors
The statement by the director of CleanSpark (CLSK) comes after this company closed a offer of convertible notes for a total of 650 million dollars.
When the American company announced the issuance of that instrument to obtain capital from investors, it did not specify whether it would use the money raised to buy BTC, as other industry giants have done.
Such is the case of Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) and Riot Platforms (RIOT). These miners, following the path of MicroStrategy and while continuing their BTC extractions, used the use of convertible bonds to obtain liquidity, buy bitcoin and add it to their reserves, waiting for the price of bitcoin to rise and that value your holdings.
CleanSpark CEO and President Zach Bradford explained that they prefer to invest in increase the mining capacity of the company, instead of directly acquiring bitcoin on the market.
“We believe miners are still being valued more in their market cap for what they produce, rather than just the bitcoin they hold.”
Zach Bradford, CEO and President of CleanSpark.
At the time of this article, CleanSpark maintains a reserve of almost 9,300 BTCwhich is equivalent to almost 980 million dollarswhile its market capitalization is 3.6 billion dollarsbeing the 4th largest bitcoin mining company in the world in this regard.
Bradford explained that “in terms of exahasheswe were, more or less, at $100 million market cap per exahash at the end of November (2024).”
In this sense, the President of CleanSpark pointed out that the company issued the convertible notes to finance access to a greater processing power.
“By the end of November we had a computing power of 33.7 EH/s and this month we hope to reach 37 EH/s. Our next step is to reach 50 EH/s and that is one of the reasons why we use this capital.”
Zach Bradford, CEO and President of CleanSpark.
MicroStrategy is the publicly traded company with the largest BTC holdings, accumulating 439,000 BTC in its balance sheet. These reserves generate a premium in its market capitalization due to its shareholders’ perception of Bitcoin’s potential.
However, Bradford maintains that Mining companies do not receive a comparable premium simply for holding bitcoin.
“If you look at Michael Saylor, he has a huge built-in bonus. In the miners, it is not even close to the same.”
Zach Bradford, CEO and President of CleanSpark.
Thus, CleanSpark’s strategy will have to be evaluated in the future, given that, currently and based on their market capitalization, MARA and RIOT are above CLSK with $8.3 billion and $4.8 billion, respectively.
