Hut 8, a public Bitcoin mining company, announced it has been cleared to issue a “stalking horse” bid for several natural gas power plants and a Bitcoin mining site. The Canada-based miner hopes to integrate these services to expand its business to sell power to the market and develop artificial intelligence activities.

Hut 8, a Nasdaq-listed (HUT) Bitcoin mining company, announced it has received court approval to issue a “stalking horse” bid, a bid for a bankrupt firm or its assets that is arranged in advance of an auction to act as an effective reserve bid, for a series of natural gas power plants and a Bitcoin mining site located in North Bay, Ontario.

The acquisition, if completed, might end the legal battle between Hut 8 and Validus Power Corp., Hut 8’s power provider that was sued in January for failing to comply with a power purchase agreement (PPA) to supply 100MW (megawatts) to Hut 8 facilities.

According to reports, Validus suspended power delivery to the facility after the conflict started, having only delivered 20MW of the 100MW contracted in the jointly signed PPA.

Vertical Integration

If completed, the acquisition of a 40 MW facility in Kapuskasing, a 110 MW facility in Kingston, a 120 MW facility in Iroquois Falls, and a 40 MW facility and Bitcoin mine in North Bay, would greatly enhance Hut 8’s capacity for building self-sufficient Bitcoin facilities, without having to depend on other companies to provide the power needed to run them.

On the possible utilization of these power plants, Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton stated:

If our bid to acquire four natural gas facilities in Ontario totaling 310 MW from Validus is successful, we anticipate that the strategic addition of these assets would position Hut 8 as a vertically integrated mining operation, allow us to utilize idle infrastructure and machinery, and provide access to energy pricing certainty.

Leverton also elaborated on the expansion opportunities that the acquisition of these power plants would open to the company, explaining that having access to them would give Hut 8 “the optionality to pursue revenue generating activity including selling energy to the market, mining Bitcoin, and powering high-demand HPC applications like AI,” to diversify the company’s activities ahead of the upcoming bitcoin halving.

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