Terawulf, a bitcoin mining company, has announced the full deployment of its 50-megawatt (MW) stake in the nuclear-powered Nautilus Cryptomine facility. The facility is powered by 100% nuclear power and benefits from a fixed power cost of $0.02 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Terawulf is collaborating with Cumulus Coin, LLC, as the Nautilus Cryptomine is referred to as a “joint venture” between the two companies. Terawulf has the option to add another 50 MW, and it plans to do so in “future phases,” the firm’s press statement explains.
The Nautilus Cryptomine facility is a carbon-free data center with 24/7 baseload power stemming from the Susquehanna nuclear generation station in Pennsylvania. The company revealed that it has successfully deployed 50 MW or 1.9 exahash per second (EH/s) of hashrate. Terawulf currently has 4 EH/s of hashpower with its 34,500 bitcoin mining devices. Besides the nuclear power from the Pennsylvania facility, Terawulf details that its bitcoin mining production also leverages hydro and solar at its other locations.
“Deploying 50 MW of mining capacity at the Nautilus facility is an important milestone for the Company. Not only does it represent the first nuclear-powered bitcoin mining facility in the U.S., but Terawulf now has the opportunity to realize the economic advantage of 50 MW of zero-carbon mining at what is arguably the lowest contracted power cost in the sector – just $0.02/kWh for a term of five years,” said Paul Prager, the chairman and CEO of Terawulf.
Terawulf energizing its 50-megawatt Nautilus stake comes at a time when bitcoin prices have dropped below the $29K per unit zone, down 5.7% over the last seven days. The drop has made it so BTC’s average mining costs are higher than the current spot market value, according to macromicro.me statistics. BTC miners are also contending with the network difficulty ramping up to 48.71 trillion on April 20 at block height 786,240. In less than two months, the network’s difficulty has risen more than 22% higher, putting yet another strain on mining operations.
The deployment of the Nautilus Cryptomine facility marks an important milestone for Terawulf as it becomes the first nuclear-powered bitcoin mining facility in the United States. The company aims to reach 5.5 EH/s of operational mining capacity by Q2 2023. With its zero-carbon mining approach, Terawulf has the opportunity to realize significant economic advantages and further expand its mining capacity in the future. The success of Terawulf’s collaboration with Cumulus Coin, LLC, is also a significant step towards a greener and more sustainable future for the cryptocurrency industry.
