BITMINE IMMERSION TECHNOLOGIES INC

Company Background

A predecessor to the Company was incorporated in the state of Nevada on August 16, 1995 as Interactive Lighting Showrooms, Inc. On June 30, 2004, the predecessor changed its name to Am/Tex Oil and Gas, Inc. On January 24, 2008, the predecessor changed its name to Critical Point Resources, Inc. On February 2, 2012, the predecessor changed its name to Renewable Energy Solution Systems, Inc. On May 18, 2012, the predecessor changed its name to RES Systems, Inc. On May 23, 2013, the predecessor changed its name back to Renewable Energy Solution Systems, Inc.

On April 6, 2020, the predecessor redomiciled in the State of Delaware by merging with a Delaware subsidiary named RESS Merger Corp., which was the successor in the merger. Thereafter, effective July 15, 2020, the predecessor and the Company effected a holding company reorganization pursuant to Section 251(g) of the Delaware General Corporation Law (the “DGCL”) under which RESS Merger Corp. merged with RESS of Delaware, Inc., a Delaware subsidiary of RESS Merger Corp., and all shareholders of RESS Merger Corp. received one share of common stock of the Company, another Delaware subsidiary of RESS Merger Corp., for each share that they previously held in RESS Merger Corp., and RESS of Delaware, Inc. (the successor in the merger with RESS Merger Corp.) becoming a subsidiary of the Company.

Effective July 17, 2020, the Company divested RESS of Delaware, Inc. to Sterling Acquisitions I, Inc. (“Sterling”), which is owned by the chief executive officer of the Company, pursuant to an agreement under Sterling (i) purchased Ten Million (10,000,000) common shares of the Company for an aggregate price of Ten Dollars ($10), and (ii) was issued Ten Million (10,000,000) Class A Warrants at an aggregate price of Ten Dollars ($10), and (iii). Ten Million (10,000,000) Class B Warrants at an aggregate price of Ten Dollars ($10). In addition, the Company agreed to pay a fee of $1,000 to Sterling to cover the expenses associated with the maintenance of RESS of Delaware, Inc. until such time as a certificate of dissolution is filed with the state of Delaware.

By a written consent dated July 16, 2021, holders of a majority of the Company’s issued and outstanding common stock approved a resolution to appoint Jonathan Bates, Raymond Mow, Michael Maloney and Seth Bayles to the board of directors of the Company, and to appoint Jonathan Bates as Chairman, Seth Bayles as Corporate Secretary, Raymond Mow as Chief Financial Officer, and Ryan Ramnath as Chief Operating Officer (collectively, the “New O&Ds”). Erik S. Nelson remained a director and the chief executive officer. At the same time, the shareholders approved the issuance of 32,994,999 shares of common stock in the Company’s offering of common stock at $0.015 per share, and the grant of 4,750,000 shares for services, which were valued at $0.015 per share. As a result of the foregoing stock issuances, the New O&Ds (or entities controlled by them) collectively acquired 24,893,877 shares of common stock, which represented approximately 62% of the issued and outstanding shares at the time.

The appointment of certain of the New O&Ds to the Company’s board, and issuance to the New O&Ds of a controlling interest in the Company, were made in order to enable the Company to enter the business of creating a hosting center for bitcoin mining computers primarily utilizing immersion cooling technology, as well mining the bitcoin digital currency for its own account. Prior to the change of control to the New O&Ds, the Company was a shell company.

Company Overview

Since July 2021, our business has been as a blockchain technology company that is building out industrial scale digital asset mining, equipment sales and hosting operations. The Company’s primary business is self-mining bitcoin for its own account, as well as hosting third-party equipment used in mining of digital asset coins and tokens, specifically bitcoin. Our state-of-the-art facilities will be specifically designed and constructed for housing advanced mining equipment. Our data centers will provide power, racks, proprietary thermodynamic management (heat dissipation and airflow management), redundant connectivity, 24/7 security, as well as software which provide infrastructure management and custom firmware that boost performance and energy efficiency.

We plan to operate our data centers using immersion cooling technology. Immersion cooling is the process of submerging computer components (or full servers) in a thermally, but not electrically, conductive liquid (dielectric coolant) allowing higher heat transfer performance than air and many other benefits. Immersion cooling can be up to 95% more efficient than standard air cooling, producing an estimated PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.05. This cooler environment has been shown to extend machine lives by 30% or longer.

Our digital asset mining operation is focused on the generation of digital assets by solving complex cryptographic algorithms to validate transactions on specific digital asset network blockchains, which is commonly referred to as “mining.” Mining requires the use of specialized computers equipped with application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips (known as “miners”) to solve complex cryptographic algorithms in support of the bitcoin blockchain (in a process known as “solving a block”) in exchange for digital asset rewards (to date, only bitcoin). Whether we are hosting our client’s computers or mining for our own account with our own computers, the miners participate in “mining pools” organized by “mining pool operators” in which we or our clients share mining power (known as “hash rate”) with the hash rate generated by other miners participating in the pool to earn digital asset rewards. The mining pool operator provides a service that coordinates the computing power of the independent mining enterprises participating in the mining pool. Fees are paid to the mining pool operator to cover the costs of maintaining the pool. The pool uses software that coordinates the pool members’ mining power, identifies new block rewards, and records how much hash rate each participant contributes to the pool. Pools typically pay rewards in different ways: as a percentage of the total reward received by the mining pool each day based on each pool participant’s proportionate share of hashing power provided that day (the “Pay-Per-Share Method”); or based on the theoretical reward the pool participant should have received each day based on its hashing power contributed to the pool each day times the difficulty index (the “Full-Pay-Per-Share Method”). We only use mining pools that pay rewards under the Full-Pay-Per-Share Method.

As the demand for digital assets increases and digital assets become more widely accepted, there is an increasing demand for professional-grade, scalable infrastructure to support growth of the blockchain ecosystem. We expect to continually evaluate the performance of our data centers, including our ability to access additional megawatts of electric power and to expand our total self-mining and customer and related party hosting hash rates.

Our digital asset self-mining activity competes with a myriad of mining operations throughout the world to complete new blocks in the blockchain and earn the reward in the form of an established unit of a digital asset. Revenue from digital asset mining and hosting third party digital asset miners are impacted by volatility in bitcoin prices, as well as increases in the bitcoin blockchain’s network hash rate resulting from the growth in the overall quantity and quality of miners working to solve blocks on the bitcoin blockchain and the difficulty index associated with the secure hashing algorithm employed in solving the blocks. Gross profits from digital asset mining are primarily impacted by the market price of bitcoin at the time of mining and the cost of electricity to operate the miners and to a lesser extent by other operating costs. While we expect to sell or exchange a portion of the digital assets we mine to fund our growth strategies or for general corporate purposes, we may hold our digital assets as investments in anticipation of continued adoption of digital assets as a “store of value” and a more efficient medium of exchange than traditional fiat currencies.

As the demand for digital assets increases and digital assets become more widely accepted, there is an increasing demand for professional-grade, scalable infrastructure to support growth of the blockchain ecosystem. We expect to continually evaluate the performance of our data centers, including our ability to access additional megawatts of electric power and to expand our total self-mining and customer and related party hosting hash rates.

We also generate revenues from the advantageous purchase and sale of equipment used for digital asset mining and hosting. We have relationships with some suppliers that enable us to acquire highly desired equipment at attractive prices, which we plan to resell to third parties. In most cases, resales of digital asset mining equipment would be to our hosting customers, which have the dual benefit of generating short-term gross profits from the equipment sale as well as growing the customer base of our hosting business.

Trinidad Operations

We initially decided to locate our initial facilities in Trinidad, because it has some of the cheapest electricity in the world due to its abundant supplies of oil and gas and because some of our technical staff is located there. We have entered into an agreement with Telecommunications Services of Trinidad & Tobago Limited (“TSTT”), the largest and oldest telecom company in Trinidad, to co-locate up to 125 800 kw containers for hosting digital asset miners. TSTT has up to 93 potential locations for co-location of our containers. Under the agreement, we have the option, but not the obligation, to co-locate containers at our own pace. We pay a fixed amount per container, plus the actual electricity costs incurred by our containers in the amount billed to TSTT by the local utility without any markup. The agreement provides that our hosting containers will be billed for electricity usage at the local utility’s standard rates, which is the greater of 3.5 cents per kwh or 75% of the declared reserve capacity, which is equal to the customer’s highest expected monthly kilovolt-ampere demand at $7.40. The term of the agreement expires on October 14, 2031. We have the right to terminate our agreement with TSTT at any time that the price for electricity consumption exceeds $0.05 per kwh.

In October 2022, we completed the installation of initial hosting containers under our agreement with TSTT. However, prior to commencing operations, TSTT advised us that the utility refused to honor its existing agreement with TSTT with respect to electricity supplied to our pilot hosting site, and instead indicated that the rate would be approximately $0.09 per kwh, which TSTT disputed. The dispute has been resolved, the site became operational in October 2023, and our rate for electricity is TSTT’s existing rate of 3.5 cents per kwh or 75% of the declared reserve capacity, which is equal to the customer’s highest expected monthly kilovolt-ampere demand at $7.40.

While our TSTT site was delayed pending electrification, we entered into a hosting agreement with a third party in Trinidad to host up to 192 miners in one immersion container until December 31, 2024. We had previously sold two containers to the third party under a long-term note secured by the containers. In July 2024, we foreclosed on the containers as a result of a default by the third party on the note. We moved our miners to our existing TSTT site, where we now have 440 operational miners as of December 5, 2024. We are currently evaluating other TSTT sites as a location for the two repossessed immersion containers.

We are also leasing space from a third party on an at-will basis to co-host 60 miners, for which we pay a flat rate of $0.06 per kwh each month. We ultimately intend to move all of our miners in Trinidad to our TSTT hosting facilities.

Despite the expective favorable resolution of our dispute in Trinidad, we are currently focusing our efforts on the development of hosting centers in the United States and Canada, both directly and in joint ventures with third parties. We are exploring situations where medium to long-term power agreements may be available at affordable prices, whether using traditional power sources such as coal or natural gas, as well as environmentally friendly sources such as hydroelectric, wind and solar-backed projects, which might allow us to generate collateral revenue from the sale of excess power to the local utility grid and from the generation of saleable carbon credits.

Pecos, Texas Operations

In October 2022, we entered into a joint venture arrangement with ROC Digital Mining Manager LLC (“ROC Manager”) to jointly develop and operate a bitcoin mining operation in Pecos, Texas. Under the joint venture, we contributed one immersion container, six transformers and cash with a value of $987,429 as a capital contribution to ROC Digital Mining I, LLC (the “ROC Digital”). In return, we received 240 Class B Units of ROC Digital pursuant to an ongoing offering of a total of 1,000 Class B Units at $4,400 per unit. An affiliate of ROC Manager also contributed an immersion container. We simultaneously sold ROC Digital four immersion containers for $1,200,000, which is payable pursuant to a promissory note the bears interest at 5% per annum, and is payable pursuant to monthly payments of $31,203.64 per month commencing on December 30, 2022, with any remaining principal and interest payable in full on May 31, 2026. The note is secured by the equipment that was sold. We also obtained the right to locate one container at the location that we would be able to use for self-mining. As of August 31, 2024 the principal amount due on the note receivable from ROC Digital was $655,277.

Any distributions of assets by ROC Digital are allocated as follows: i) 100% to the Class B Members until each Class B Member has received the return of its capital contributions; ii) 100% to the Class B Members until each Class B Member has received a non-compounded preferred return of 1% per month (12% per year) on its capital contribution, provided that a Class Member will no longer entitled to a preferred return once it has received total distributions equal to five times its capital contributions; iii) 70% to the Class Members and 30% to the Class A Members until each Class B Member has received total distributions equal to three times its capital contributions; (iv) 60% to the Class Members and 40% to the Class A Members until each Class B Member has received total distributions equal to four times its capital contributions; (v) 50% to the Class Members and 50% to the Class A Members until the seventh anniversary of the final closing of Class B Units; and (vi) thereafter, all to the Class A Members.

ROC Digital is managed by ROC Manager, which owns all of the Class A Units of ROC Digital. The Class A Units have the sole right to vote on any matter that requires a vote of members, including in the selection of the manager. We own 33 1/3% of ROC Manager. ROC Manager is managed by from one to three managers selected by a vote of the members. We do not currently have a representative or designee serving as manager of ROC Manager. However, the operating agreement for ROC Manager provides that ROC Manager may not take a number of actions in relation to ROC Digital without the unanimous consent of its members, such as incurring more than $50,000 of indebtedness, approval of operating budget, filing for bankruptcy, making any material change in ROC Digital’s business, merging, consolidating or combining ROC Digital with another entity, selling off a substantial part of ROC Digital’s assets, amending the operating agreement of ROC Digital, or causing ROC Digital to enter into any agreement with a related party.

Day to day management of the operations of ROC Digital is provided by ROC Digital Mining LLC (“ROC Mining”), an affiliate of ROC Manager in which we do not have an interest. ROC Mining is entitled to a monthly management fee equal to 3% of ROC Digital’s gross revenue, subject to a monthly minimum of $10,000 and a monthly maximum of $15,000. In additional ROC Mining is entitled to an acquisition fee of 1% of the cost of any assets acquired by ROC Digital.

ROC Manager initially expected the site would be operational by December 31, 2022. After the site work was substantially completed, the commencement of operations was delayed as a result of a request by the electricity provider for an additional deposit as a result of recent bankruptcies in the mining and hosting industry. In addition, a dispute with the joint venture’s vendor for ASIC miners delayed the delivery of miners for the facility.

In April 2023, the joint venture entered into a new one year agreement with the electricity provider, under which the site received electricity at $0.03991 per kwh for at least 95% of the annualized hourly intervals during the period. The initial agreement had a term of four years and seven months, and supplied electricity at $0.06896 per kwh, which the joint venture expected to reduce by reselling electricity during peak periods. The new agreement provided the joint venture with more predictable pricing, although a new agreement will need to be negotiated after the one year term. At the same time, we finalized a hosting agreement with the joint venture, under which we will locate one immersion container at the site for $500 per month, plus payment of our pro rata share of electricity, internet and insurance for the site. Under the hosting agreement, we also agreed to contribute $100,000 toward the electricity deposit for the site, which is refundable to us at the earlier of the date the electricity provider releases the deposit or 90 days after the expiration or termination of the hosting agreement. The hosting agreement has a term of one year, subject to our right to renew the agreement for two one year terms after receipt of notice of the renewal terms of the joint venture’s electricity supply agreement for the upcoming year. The site became fully electrified in June 2023. As of December 5, 2024, we had deployed 96 Antminer S-19 pro miners to our hosting container at the site. The joint venture initially filled its six immersion containers with ASIC miners provided by hosting clients, although most of the hosting clients agreements terminated in April 2024. Currently, approximately five of the hosting containers owned by the joint venture are fully or partially occupied by clients, although the joint venture is aggressively trying to fill the remaining capacity with hosting clients. The joint venture also owns two immersion containers which are not installed, but will be if hosting demand warrants.

On April 29, 2024, the joint venture executed an energy services agreement for the site that runs from May 1, 2024 to April 30, 2025. Under the current agreement, the site will receive electricity at the prevailing rate plus $0.0055 per kwh. The joint venture is not obligated to purchase any specific quantity of electricity, and employs software which automatically discontinues mining operations when the prevailing rate exceeds certain levels. In April 2024, we renewed our hosting contract with the joint venture for an additional year.

Murray, Kentucky Operations

On October 4, 2023, the Company purchased 1,050 used ASIC miners from Luxor Technology Corporation (“Luxor”) for $488,775, and simultaneously entered into a Co-Location Services Agreement to host the miners at a hosting facility owned by Soluna SW, LLC (“Soluna”) in Murray, Kentucky. We subsequently added 45 ASIC miners in May 2024 that we purchased from Soluna. The hosting agreement with Soluna has a term of 18 months, and provides that the Company is obligated to reimburse Soluna for the actual cost of the electricity used by the Company’s machines and pay a hosting fee equal to 50% of the net profit generated by the machines each month. The hosting fee is payable in bitcoin. The hosting facility has an electricity cost of $0.025 per kwh and guarantees uptime of 83% per week.

Revenue Sources

Our revenue will consist primarily of bitcoin generated from our self-mining operations, and secondarily from sales of mining equipment. We also may generate revenue from hosting fees to the extent we enter into hosting contracts with third party miners.

We consider these all to be part of the same line of business. We do not have any fixed goals regarding the percentage of our data centers that we use for hosting third party miners versus the percentage that we use for self-mining. For mining or hosting equipment that we purchase, we also do not have any fixed goals regarding whether we utilize the equipment for our own account, sell it to a customer or other third party or contribute it to a joint venture. We let market conditions and overall profitability analysis guide the decisions. When we host, we look for opportunities to profitably sell miners to the hosting client in a buy/host transaction. In some instances, we may resell data centers and electrical equipment if we are offered an attractive price and believe that we can replace it at a lower price and by the time we may need it for our internal operations. These decisions are dynamic and based on the overall market for all of the above.

Our decision to utilize the data center space for hosting versus self-mining will depend on the relative profitability of each segment at the time and whether we have the capital to invest in new miners for mining for our own account at the time. In recent years, the prices of miners have fluctuated widely due to supply and demand factors, and mining for our own account is less profitable when the price of miners is high due to the capital costs needed to acquire the miners. In addition, the margins from mining have also fluctuated widely in recent years due to wide fluctuations in the price of digital assets and the electricity prices need to mine digital assets.

We do not generally accept digital assets as payment for goods and services. However, we have agreed to accept digital assets as payment in some situations, and expect to enter into more such arrangements in the future. To the extent we agree to accept digital assets as payment, we intend to only accept bitcoin. We expect that most of our hosting contracts will provide that we receive a percentage of bitcoin mined by our hosting customers as partial payment for our hosting services. In addition, under our hosting agreements we have the right to apply bitcoin mined by our hosting customers toward payment of amounts invoiced in U.S. dollars if the invoiced amount is not paid by its due date; however, in such situations, the credit that is applied to the U.S. dollar invoice is based on the actual cash proceeds received from the conversion of the bitcoin into U.S. dollars or a discount to the spot price of bitcoin if it is not immediately converted in U.S. dollars. We have also agreed to sell hosting containers to a third party for a note payable in bitcoin.

We do not have a set policy in regard to how long we hold digital assets that we receive as payment, although our practice has been to immediately sell digital assets as needed to pay operating expenses or for capital expenditures. We do not plan to hold any digital assets that we receive as a long-term investment. We currently hold substantially all of our digital assets at BitGo Trust, a well-known custodian. We seek to minimize the risk of a failure of any bitcoin exchange by maintaining accounts at more than one exchange. In that regard, we have an account with Gemini Trust Company, LLC, which is a qualified custodian regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services, to which we can transfer any digital assets that we decide to liquidate immediately prior to their liquidation. Assets that we liquidate through Gemini are generally transferred to Gemini from a cold storage wallet immediately prior to liquidation. We store a de minimis amount of digital assets at Gemini.

Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies Generally

Bitcoin was first introduced in 2008 and was first introduced as a means of exchange in 2009. Bitcoin is a digital asset that is issued by and transmitted through an open-source protocol collectively maintained by a peer-to-peer network of decentralized user nodes. This network hosts a public transaction ledger, known as the bitcoin blockchain, on which bitcoin holdings and transactions in bitcoin are recorded. Balances of bitcoin are stored in individual “wallet” functions, which associate network public addresses with a “private key” that controls the transfer of bitcoin. The bitcoin blockchain can be updated without any single entity owning or operating the network. New bitcoin is created and allocated by the protocol that governs bitcoin through a “mining” process that rewards users that verify transactions in the bitcoin blockchain. The bitcoin protocol limits the total issuance of bitcoin over time to 21 million.

Bitcoin can be used to pay for goods and services, or it can be converted to fiat currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, at rates of exchange determined by market forces on bitcoin trading platforms, which operate 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week and are not regulated in as comprehensive a manner as traditional securities exchanges. As a result, trading on these markets is likely more subject to manipulation than on securities markets regulated by the SEC, and pricing on these markets is likely affected by such manipulative activity. In addition to these platforms, over-the-counter markets and derivatives markets for bitcoin also exist; however, these markets are still maturing and many are unregulated.

We do not have a fixed policy regarding fiat currencies, other than to immediately sell enough to cover operating expenses, to sell enough to cover capital expenses when required, and to ultimately sell all of it when needs arise. We do not plan to leverage our balance sheet in order to hold bitcoin.

Bitcoin exists entirely in electronic form, as virtually irreversible public transaction ledger entries on the blockchain, and transactions in bitcoin are recorded and authenticated not by a central repository, but by a decentralized peer-to-peer network. This decentralization avoids certain threats common to centralized computer networks, such as denial of service attacks, and reduces the dependency of the bitcoin network on any single system. While the bitcoin network as a whole is decentralized, the private keys used to access bitcoin balances are not widely distributed and are held on hardware (which can be physically controlled by the holder or by a third party such as a custodian) or via software programs on third-party servers and loss of such private keys results in an inability to access, and effective loss of, the corresponding bitcoin. Consequently, bitcoin holdings are susceptible to all of the risks inherent in holding any electronic data, such as power failure, data corruption, security breach, communication failure, and user error, among others. These risks, in turn, make bitcoin subject to theft, destruction, or loss of value from hackers, corruption, or technology-specific factors such as viruses that do not affect conventional fiat currency. In addition, the bitcoin network relies on open-source developers to maintain and improve the bitcoin protocol. Accordingly, bitcoin may be subject to protocol design changes, governance disputes such as “forked” protocols, competing protocols, and other open source-specific risks that do not affect conventional proprietary software.

Distributed blockchain technology is a decentralized and encrypted ledger that is designed to offer a secure, efficient, verifiable, and permanent way of storing records and other information without the need for intermediaries. Cryptocurrencies serve multiple purposes. They can serve as a medium of exchange, store of value or unit of account. Examples of cryptocurrencies include: bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and litecoin. Blockchain technologies are being evaluated for a multitude of industries due to the belief in their ability to have a significant impact in many areas of business, finance, information management, and governance.

Cryptocurrencies are decentralized currencies that enable near instantaneous transfers. Transactions occur via an open source, cryptographic protocol platform which uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority. The online network hosts the public transaction ledger, known as the blockchain, and each cryptocurrency is associated with a source code that comprises the basis for the cryptographic and algorithmic protocols governing the blockchain. In a cryptocurrency network, every peer has its own copy of the blockchain, which contains records of every historical transaction - effectively containing records of all account balances. Each account is identified solely by its unique public key (making it effectively anonymous) and is secured with its associated private key (kept secret, like a password). The combination of private and public cryptographic keys constitutes a secure digital identity in the form of a digital signature, providing strong control of ownership.

No single entity owns or operates the network. The infrastructure is collectively maintained by a decentralized public user base. As the network is decentralized, it does not rely on either governmental authorities or financial institutions to create, transmit or determine the value of the currency units. Rather, the value is determined by market factors, supply and demand for the units, the prices being set in transfers by mutual agreement or barter among transacting parties, as well as the number of merchants that may accept the cryptocurrency. Since transfers do not require involvement of intermediaries or third parties, there are currently little to no transaction costs in direct peer-to-peer transactions. Units of cryptocurrency can be converted to fiat currencies, such as the US dollar, at rates determined on various exchanges, such as Cumberland, Coinsquare (in Canada), Coinbase, Bitsquare, Bitstamp, and others. Cryptocurrency prices are quoted on various exchanges and fluctuate with extreme volatility.

We believe cryptocurrencies offer many advantages over traditional, fiat currencies, although many of these factors also present potential disadvantages and may introduce additional risks, including:

However, cryptocurrencies may not provide all of the benefits they purport to offer at all or at any time.

As with many new and emerging technologies, there are potentially significant risks. Businesses (including the Company) which are seeking to develop, promote, adopt, transact or rely upon blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies have a limited track record and operate within an untested new environment. These risks are not only related to the businesses the Company pursues, but the sector and industry as a whole, as well as the entirety of the concept behind blockchain and cryptocurrency as value. Factors such as access to computer processing capacity, interconnectivity, electricity cost, environmental factors (such as cooling capacity) and location play an important role in “mining,” which is the term for using the specialized computers in connection with the blockchain for the creation of new units of cryptocurrency.

Digital Asset Mining

Specialized computers, or “miners,” power and secure blockchains by solving complex cryptographic algorithms to validate transactions on specific digital asset networks. In order to add blocks to the blockchain, a miner must map an input data set consisting of the existing blockchain, plus a block of the most recent digital asset transactions and an arbitrary number called a “nonce,” to an output data set of a predetermined length using the SHA256 cryptographic hash algorithm. Solving these algorithms is also known as “solving or completing a block.” Solving a block results in a reward of digital assets, such as bitcoin, in a process known as “mining.” These rewards of digital assets currently can be sold profitably when the sale price of the digital asset exceeds the cost of “mining,” which generally consists of the cost of mining hardware, the cost of the electrical power to operate the machine, and other facility costs to house and operate the equipment.

Mining processing power is generally referred to as “hashing power.” A “hash” is the computation run by mining hardware in support of the blockchain. A miner’s “hash rate” refers to the rate at which it is capable of solving such computations per second. Miners with higher rated hash rate when operating at maximum efficiency have a higher chance of completing a block in the blockchain and receiving a digital asset reward. Currently, the likelihood that an individual mining participant acting alone will solve a block and be awarded a digital asset is extremely low. As a result, to maximize the opportunities to receive a reward, most large-scale miners have joined with other miners in “mining pools” where the computing power of each pool participant is coordinated to complete the block on the blockchain and mining rewards are distributed to participants in accordance with the rules of the mining pool. Fees payable to the operator of the pool vary but are typically as much as 2% of the reward earned and are deducted from the amounts earned by each pool participant. Mining pools are subject to various risks including connection issues, outages and other disruptions which can impact the quantity of digital assets earned by participants.

Mathematically Controlled Supply

The method for creating new bitcoins is mathematically controlled in a manner so that the supply of bitcoins grows at a limited rate pursuant to a pre-set schedule. The number of bitcoins awarded for solving a new block is automatically halved every 210,000 blocks. This means every block up to and including block 210,000 produced a reward of 50 bitcoin, while blocks beginning with 210,001 produced a reward of 25 bitcoin. Since blocks are mined on average every 10 minutes, 144 blocks are mined per day on average. At 144 blocks per day, 210,000 blocks take four years to mine on average. The current fixed reward for solving a new block is 6.25 bitcoin per block and it is anticipated that the reward will decrease by half to become 3.125 bitcoin per block in early 2024, according to estimates of the rate of block solution calculated by BitcoinClock.com. This deliberately controlled rate of bitcoin creation means that the number of bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21 million and that bitcoins cannot be devalued through excessive production unless the Bitcoin Network’s source code (and the underlying protocol for bitcoin issuance) is altered.

Performance Metrics

Hash Rate

Miners perform computational operations in support of digital asset blockchains measured in “hash rate” or “hashes per second.” A “hash” is the computation run by mining hardware in support of the blockchain; therefore, a miner’s “hash rate” refers to the rate at which it is capable of solving such computations. The original equipment used for mining bitcoin utilized the Central Processing Unit (“CPU”) of a computer to mine various forms of digital assets. Due to performance limitations, CPU mining was rapidly replaced by the Graphics Processing Unit (“GPU”), which offers significant performance advantages over CPUs. General purpose chipsets like CPUs and GPUs have since been replaced as the standard in the mining industry by ASIC chips such as those found in the S17, S19 and S21 miners that we and our customers use to mine bitcoin. These ASIC chips are designed specifically to maximize the rate of hashing operations.

Network Hash Rate

In digital assets mining, hash rate is a measure of the processing speed by a mining computer for a specific digital asset. A participant in a blockchain network’s mining function has a hash rate total of its miners seeking to mine a specific digital asset and, system-wide, there is a total hash rate of all miners seeking to mine each specific type of digital asset. A higher total hash rate relative to the system-wide total hash rate generally results over time in a corresponding higher success rate in digital asset rewards as compared to mining participants with relatively lower total hash rates.

However, as the relative market price for a digital asset increases, more users are incentivized to mine that digital asset, which increases the network’s overall hash rate. As a result, a mining participant must increase its total hash rate in order to maintain its relative possibility of solving a block on the network blockchain. Achieving greater hash rate power by deploying increasingly sophisticated miners in ever greater quantities has become one of the bitcoin mining industry’s great sources of competition. Our goal is to deploy a powerful fleet of hosted- and self-miners, while operating as energy-efficiently as possible.

Key Factors Affecting Our Performance

Market Price of Digital Assets

Our business is heavily dependent on the spot price of bitcoin, as well as other digital assets. The prices of digital assets, specifically bitcoin, have experienced substantial volatility, which may reflect “bubble” type volatility, meaning that high or low prices may have little or no relationship to identifiable market forces, may be subject to rapidly changing investor sentiment, and may be influenced by factors such as technology, regulatory void or changes, fraudulent actors, manipulation, and media reporting. Bitcoin (as well as other digital assets) may have value based on various factors, including their acceptance as a means of exchange by consumers and others, scarcity, and market demand.

Our financial performance and growth depend in large part on our ability to mine for digital assets profitably and to attract customers for our hosting services. Increases in power costs, inability to mine digital assets efficiently and to sell digital assets at favorable prices will reduce our operating margins, impact our ability to attract customers for our services may harm our growth prospects and could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Over time, there has been a positive trend in the total market capitalization of digital assets which suggests increased adoption. However, historical trends are not indicative of future adoption, and it is possible that the adoption of digital assets and blockchain technology may slow, take longer to develop, or never be broadly adopted, which would negatively impact our business and operating results.

Network Hash Rate

Our business is not only impacted by the volatility in digital asset prices, but also by increases in cost of mining digital assets, as reflected by the blockchain’s network hash rate resulting from the growth in the overall quantity and quality of miners working to solve blocks on the blockchain and the difficulty index associated with the secure hashing algorithm employed in solving the blocks. As more and more hash rate is needed to maintain competitiveness on a given coin’s blockchain, miners deploy more and more machines, which require electrical power to operate, both to directly power hash rate production and also to dissipate the significant amount of heat generated by the machines’ operation. Therefore, as more hash rate is generated, more electric power is consumed, which generally increases the cost of mining a given coin. In response, miners have attempted to achieve greater hash rate by deploying increasingly sophisticated miners in ever greater quantities. This has become the cryptocurrency mining industry’s great “arms race.”

Our current fleet of working miners has a j/TH efficiency of 31.8. We own a small number of less efficient machines, which are primarily in storage. We also own a small number of S-21's, with an efficiency of 18 j/TH. We hope and expect our machines in the future to be newer or current generation, with efficiency of 17-21 j/TH. We hope to slowly increase our fleet efficiency throughout calendar year 2025.

Halving

Further affecting the industry, and particularly for the bitcoin blockchain, the digital asset reward for solving a block is subject to periodic incremental halving. Halving is a process designed to control the overall supply and reduce the risk of inflation in digital assets using a proof of work consensus algorithm. At a predetermined block, the mining reward is reduced by half, hence the term “halving.” For bitcoin the reward was initially set at 50 bitcoin currency rewards per block. The bitcoin blockchain has undergone halvings four times since its inception as follows: (1) on November 28, 2012, at block height 210,000; (2) on July 9, 2016, at block height 420,000; (3) on May 11, 2020, at block height 630,000; and (4) on April 19, 2024, at a block height of 840,000, when the reward was reduced to its current level of 3.125 bitcoin per block. The next halving for the bitcoin blockchain is currently anticipated to occur in 2028 at block height 1,050,000. Halvings will continue to occur until the total amount of bitcoin currency rewards issued reaches approximately 21 million and the theoretical supply of new bitcoin is exhausted, which is expected to occur around the year 2140. Since the price of bitcoin is not adjusted proportionally after the halving, that means that each miner will produce exactly half the amount of bitcoin as it did prior to the halving from the same amount of processing power. This directly impacts the profitability of a miner immediately after the halving. Historically, these halving events have also been the impetus for the next bull market as the reduced rate of growth of bitcoin increases the perceived scarcity of the asset.

Electricity Costs

Electricity cost is the major operating cost for the mining fleet, both to power miners and to dissipate the heat generated by the miners’ operations, as well as for the hosting services provided to customers and related parties. As a result, our ability to locate and select sites for our hosting centers that are able to supply low-cost electricity for our hosting centers is key to our success.

Equipment Costs

As the market value of digital assets increased in 2020 and 2021, the demand for the newest, most efficient miners also increased, leading to scarcity in the supply of and thereby a resulting increase in the price of miners. When the market value of digital assets declined in 2022 and 2023, the demand for all types of mines also decreased. As a result, the cost of new machines can be unpredictable. Additionally, the demand for hosting space in 2020 and 2021 increased the demand for the equipment necessary to build and operate hosting centers, which resulted in price increases and long lead times to acquire such equipment from manufacturers. With the decline in digital asset prices in 2022 and 2023, the market for hosting equipment has shifted back in favor of buyers, although not as much as has been the case with mining equipment. Our ability to secure the necessary equipment in a timely manner, while maintaining proper cost controls, will be key to our success.

Our Customers

Bitcoin is a global store of value and a medium of exchange used by people across the world as an asset and to conduct daily transactions. Mining bitcoin supports the global bitcoin blockchain and the millions of people that depend on it for economic security and other benefits. Strictly speaking, there is no customer market for mining bitcoin but we consider our mining pool operator a customer because it compensates us for providing processing power to the mining pool. As of December 5, 2024, approximately 85% of our mining capacity is located at third-party hosting firms and the remainder is located at our leased facilities. We may enter into contracts with third party miners to use our hosting capacity, in which event the third-party miners are our customers. However, we decided not to renew all of our hosting clients in our fiscal fourth quarter, and we not actively seeking other hosting clients, as we believe it is more profitable to utilize our hosting capacity for our own miners.

Competition

Our business environment is constantly evolving, and cryptocurrency miners can range from individual enthusiasts to professional mining operations with dedicated data centers. We compete with other companies that focus all or a portion of their activities on mining activities at scale. We face significant competition in every aspect of our business, including, but not limited to, the acquisition of new miners, the ability to raise capital, obtaining the lowest cost of electricity, obtaining access to energy sites with reliable sources of power, and evaluating new technology developments in the industry.

At present, the information concerning the activities of these enterprises may not be readily available as the vast majority of the participants in this sector do not publish information publicly or the information may be unreliable. Published sources of information include “bitcoin.org” and “blockchain.info”; however, the reliability of that information and its continued availability cannot be assured.

During 2023 and 2024, the bitcoin mining industry saw record growth as the price of bitcoin increased from the lows experienced in early 2023. We believe that one reason for the increase in the price of bitcoin starting in 2024 was due to a new source of demand, the eleven bitcoin spot Exchange Traded Funds (“ETFs”) approved to begin trading by the SEC on January 11, 2024. The ETFs, as an investment vehicle, provided a new access point for investors to gain exposure to bitcoin through more traditional methods resulting in the ETFs seeing a combined net inflow of approximately $18.5 billion through September 30, 2024. The increasing Bitcoin price renewed opportunities to access capital markets to fund growth, leading to unprecedent expansion in mining operations and resulting in a doubling in the size of provisioned hash calculation services on the network, as measured by total hash rate. Many bitcoin mining companies heavily invested in infrastructure, upgrading and expanding mining fleets in advance of the April 2024 bitcoin network halving. We expect competition within the mining industry to continue as long as bitcoin prices remain elevated or increase further.

Network difficulty, which is a measure of how hard it is for miners to solve a block on the bitcoin blockchain (and, thus, earn a mining reward), is determined by the network’s total hash rate (i.e., the total computational power devoted to solving a block), which is adjusted every 2,016 blocks (with a new block being added approximately every ten minutes). Therefore, as more miners join the network and the network’s global hash rate increases, its difficulty will increase. Accordingly, as market prices for bitcoin increase and more miners and hash rate are drawn onto the bitcoin network, network difficulty will continue to increase, meaning existing miners like us will need to increase their hash rate to maintain and improve their chances of earning a bitcoin mining reward. We anticipate the bitcoin network will continue to see increased competition and that 2024 will be a period of consolidation in the bitcoin mining industry.

Regulation

Our financial prospects and continued growth depend in part on our ability to continue to operate in a compliant manner with all rules and regulations. Blockchain and digital currencies are increasingly becoming subject to governmental regulation, both in the U.S. and internationally. State and local regulations also may apply to our activities and other activities in which we may participate in the future. Other governmental or semi-governmental regulatory bodies have shown an interest in regulating or investigating companies engaged in the blockchain or cryptocurrency business. For instance, the Cyber-Digital Task Force of the U.S. Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) published a report entitled “Cryptocurrency: An Enforcement Framework” in October 2020. This report provides a comprehensive overview of the possible threats and enforcement challenges the DOJ views as associated with the use and prevalence of cryptocurrency, as well as the regulatory and investigatory means the DOJ has at its disposal to deal with these possible threats and challenges. Further, in early March 2021, the SEC chairperson nominee expressed an intent to focus on investor protection issues raised by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Presently, we do not believe any U.S. or State regulatory body has taken any action or position adverse to our main cryptocurrency, bitcoin, with respect to its production, sale, and use as a medium of exchange; however, future changes to existing regulations or entirely new regulations may affect our business in ways it is not presently possible for us to predict with any reasonable degree of reliability.

Further, following the appreciation of the market price of bitcoin in the second half of 2020, we have observed increasing media attention directed at the environmental concerns associated with cryptocurrency mining, particularly its energy-intensive nature. While we do not believe any U.S.-based regulators have taken a position adverse to bitcoin mining, in March 2021, the governmental authorities for the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, which at the time represented roughly 8% of the world’s total mining power, implemented an outright ban on bitcoin mining in the province due to the industry’s intense electrical power demands and its negative environmental impacts (both in terms of the waste produced by mining the rare Earth metals used to manufacture miners and the production of electrical power used in bitcoin mining). Later, China extended the ban to the entire nation of China, effective as of the end of July 2021. While the bitcoin mining industry was able to relocate to other locations outside of China, these actions serve as a stark reminder of the power of national and state governments to affect our industry through regulator action.

As the regulatory and legal environment evolves, we may become subject to new laws, such as further regulation by the SEC and other agencies, which may affect our mining and other activities. For additional discussion regarding our belief about the potential risks existing and future regulation pose to our business, see the Section entitled “Risk Factors” herein.

Our Facilities

We initially planned to locate our initial facilities in Trinidad, because it has some of the cheapest electricity in the world due to its abundant supplies of oil and gas and because some of our technical staff is located there. We have entered into an agreement with Telecommunications Services of Trinidad & Tobago Limited (“TSTT”), the largest and oldest telecom company in Trinidad, to co-locate up to 125 800 kw containers for hosting digital asset miners. TSTT has up to 93 potential locations for co-location of our containers. Under the agreement, we have the option, but not the obligation, to co-locate containers at our own pace. We pay a fixed amount per container, plus the actual electricity costs incurred by our containers in the amount billed to TSTT by the local utility without any markup. The agreement provides that our hosting containers will be billed for electricity usage at the local utility’s standard rates, which is the greater of 3.5 cents per kwh or 75% of the declared reserve capacity, which is equal to the customer’s highest expected monthly kilovolt-ampere demand at $7.40. The term of the agreement expires on October 14, 2031. However, we have the right to terminate our agreement with TSTT at any time that the price for electricity consumption exceeds $0.05 per kwh. Also, both parties have the right to terminate the agreement on one month notice to the other party in either the third or sixth year of the term.

As of December 2021, household electricity prices in Trinidad and Tobago averaged 5.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is the average price among all households, which ranks it among the lowest rates available in the world. In particular, Trinidad and Tobago ranked 34 th out of 148 countries surveyed in terms of the affordability of its electricity prices. In comparison, the average price in the United States for households was 16.2 cents per kwh, and in Canada was 10.7 cents per kwh. However, wholesale or bulk electricity rates, which are typically negotiated to commercial or industrial users, are typically lower than household rates. Most countries with lower rates have either unstable political environments or inadequate and unstable electrical infrastructure that make then unsuitable for data centers. See https://globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/. The rate that we expect to pay is 3.5 cents per kwh, which is less than the average in Trinidad and Tobago, because electricity to our facilities will be supplied through TSTT’s contract with the local utility.

Our TSTT site became operational in October 2023, and our rate for electricity is TSTT’s existing rate of 3.5 cents per kwh or 75% of the declared reserve capacity, which is equal to the customer’s highest expected monthly kilovolt-ampere demand at $7.40. While our TSTT site was delayed pending electrification, we entered into an oral hosting agreement with a third party in Trinidad to co-host 60 miners on an at-will basis, for which we pay a flat rate of $0.06 per kwh each month. We ultimately intend to move all of our miners in Trinidad to our new TSTT hosting facilities.

In light of the recent developments in Trinidad, we are focusing our efforts in the near term on developing hosting locations in the United States and Canada. We now have a hosting facility in Pecos, Texas, and have an additional 1,095 miners hosted by a third party in Murray, Kentucky. See “Item 2. Properties” herein. We are exploring additional situations where medium to long-term power agreements may be available at affordable prices, whether using traditional power sources such as coal or natural gas, as well as environmentally friendly sources such as hydroelectric, wind and solar-backed projects, which might allow us to generate collateral revenue from the sale of excess power to the local utility grid and from the generation of saleable carbon credits.

The Company’s president allows the Company to utilize the office space of an affiliated company for its executive offices without charge to the Company.

Hosting Equipment

Our focus is to build data centers using immersion hosting containers. In 2021 and 2022, we purchased a total of ten immersion hosting containers from Submer for an average of approximately $269,000 each. We have deployed or sold the immersion containers as follows:

Although we originally bought our immersion containers with the intention of using them purely for hosting third party equipment, we elected to sell or contribute six of the containers because we were offered an attractive price for them and because we did not have a suitable location to install them in the short-term. While we do not have any agreements to purchase additional immersion containers from Submer, we believe that additional immersion containers are available for purchase from Submer or other vendors as we need them for additional hosting facilities.

Mining Equipment

Digital asset mining is dependent on specialized digital asset mining hardware utilizing application-specific integrated circuit (“ASIC”) chips to solve blocks on blockchains using the 256-bit secure hashing algorithm. Almost all of these miners are produced outside of the United States, mostly in China and Southeast Asia, by a few manufacturers, the largest of which is Bitmain Technologies, Ltd (“Bitmain”). Our principal supplier for miners has been Bitmain. Our mining business is highly dependent upon digital asset mining equipment suppliers such as Bitmain providing an adequate supply of new generation digital asset mining machines at economical prices to enable profitable mining by us and by third-party customers intending to purchase our hosting and other solutions.

We do not have any agreements for the acquisition of miners. To date, we have purchased miners opportunistically as they been available for sale in the “spot” market. Based on historical market activity, as the market value of digital assets increases, the demand for the newest, most efficient miners will also increase, leading to scarcity in the supply, and thereby a resulting increase in the price of miners. If we need to purchase miners in larger quantities in order to fill data center capacity, we have to enter into formal agreements with Bitmain or other suppliers. These agreements, like those of other miner manufacturers, generally require significant refundable deposits payable months in advance of delivery and additional advance payments in monthly installments thereafter. These agreements also contain other terms and conditions favorable to the manufacturer.

As of December 5, 2024, we own a total of 4,725 miners, consisting of: 121 Whatsminers, 72 Antminer T-19s, and 4532 Antminer S-19s (not including retired miners). For our current inventory of miners, we paid an average of approximately $550 per machine, or $5.58 per terahash. The miners that we owned as of December 5, 2024 have an average mining efficiency of 31.83 j/TH.

Due to the significant drop in the price of miners (70-80% since early 2021) relative to the cost of the datacenter and electrical equipment needed to host the miners has led us to focus more on self-mining, since the capital investment needed to self-mine is significantly less than last year.

Patents and Trademarks

We intend to protect our intellectual property rights through a combination of trademark, patent, copyright and trade secrets laws.

Employees and Independent Contractors

As of December 5, 2024, we had seven employees and independent contractors, which do not include our officers who are performing services without a contract or compensation until we raise capital.

We have no collective bargaining agreements with our employees, and believe all independent contractor and employment agreements relationships are satisfactory. We hire independent contractors on an as-needed basis, and we may retain additional employees and consultants during the next twelve months, including additional executive management personnel with substantial experience in development business.

Available Information

We make available free of charge on our Internet website our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and all amendments to those reports as soon as reasonably practicable after such material is electronically filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission, or (the “SEC”). Our corporate website is bitminetech.io. The information in this website is not a part of this report.