- Two-phase bitcoin facility
- Additional 52 megawatts
- Hashrate to double
Phoenix Group, an Abu Dhabi-listed blockchain and cryptocurrency company, has expanded its bitcoin mining operations in Ethiopia, securing an additional 52 megawatts (MW) of power supply.
The latest move brings the company’s total capacity in the African country to 132MW and raises its global capacity to more than 500MW across five countries, it said in a statement.
The upcoming mining facility will be constructed in two stages. The first phase is expected to provide 20MW of capacity, with an expected output of 1.2 exahashes per second (EH/s).
Exahash is a unit of measure for hash rates, which are used in cryptocurrency mining. Hash rates measure the number of computations a blockchain network can perform per second. One exahash is equal to one quintillion – equal to one million trillions.
The completion of the second phase is scheduled by the end of the second quarter of this year, adding the remaining 32MW, the company said.
When fully operational, the new site’s total hashrate is projected to double to approximately 2.4 EH/s, the company said.
The latest deal comes after the technology conglomerate had acquired an 80MW power purchase agreement in Ethiopia in January.
Shares of Phoenix Group, listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange in December 2023, are down by 26 percent year to date. The shares closed at AED0.88 on the exchange on Wednesday.
