BTC miner DMG Blockchain expands after $16M fundraising

DMG Blockchain (NASDAQ: DMGGF), a Canadian BTC block reward miner, has announced the expansion of its operations following a fundraising campaign that netted the company $16 million.

DMG, which has a dual listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, channeled $5 million to purchase hydro miners from Bitmain. The miners have an efficiency of 15 J/TH, the company revealed in its press release.

“With our recent fundraising that added $16 million to DMG’s cash balance, we have immediately allocated approximately $7 million for the purchase of capital equipment to grow our business,” commented CEO Sheldon Bennett.

“We continue to seek the most effective ways to deploy this new capital to maximize return for shareholders.”

The latest investment comes from the purchase of 1 MW of hydro miners and six 1 MW containers, which the company expects to have fully installed by the end of this year. The newly ordered batch will then be installed by February 2025. Combined, the two batches will add 0.4 EH/s to the company’s hash rate. This will bring its total hash rate to 2.1 EH/s.

In addition to purchasing new miners, DMG will increase its investment in its subsidiary, which focuses on the custody of digital assets, to diversify its portfolio. Further, it plans to make investments in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, following the playbook of every other BTC miner.

With AI being one of the most lucrative sectors in the tech world, many miners are either wholly pivoting from block reward mining to focus on AI—like Tether-backed Northern Data—or shifting some of the computing resources to serve AI companies, as Hive Digital (TSXV: HIVE | OTCQX: HVBTF | FSE: HBF) and Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) have done.

In DMG’s case, a recent partnership with the Malahat Nation is key to its AI ambitions. Malahat is an island region in British Columbia with a strong cultural identity.

The partnership, announced a month ago, aims to develop 30 MW of AI data centers on the island. In his comments, Bennett noted that the data centers are “not only advancing critical infrastructure but also empowering Indigenous communities to take a leading role in the future of technology.”

DMG won’t be the last BTC block reward miner to explore better fortunes with AI. The entire sector is built on the assumption that BTC will always rise since the cost of mining has outpaced the asset’s price in recent years. The miners have accumulated debt to increase their hash rate over the years as they stockpiled their BTC, waiting for the price to skyrocket so they could cash in. However, in the bear market, when creditors came calling, most miners could not cover their positions, and some industry giants like Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZW) had to file for bankruptcy.

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