Tether acquires $100 million stake in US-Listed bitcoin miner Bitdeer

The deal will fund an expansion of Bitdeer’s , development of ASIC-based and other general corporate purposes, said. The companies didn’t disclose what percentage of Bitdeer is now held by under the agreement. Tether didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The agreement marks a major step forward for Tether in its plan to become a major miner, having begun construction of its own mining facilities in Uruguay, Paraguay and El Salvador last year. The British Virgin Islands-incorporated company, which issues the world’s most used cryptocurrency USDT, said in November that it planned to spend half a billion dollars within six months on the effort.

Bitdeer is one of the largest public crypto miners listed in the US with a market capitalization of around $670 million. Headquartered in Singapore, Bitdeer has datacenters in the US, Norway and Bhutan. Shares of Bitdeer, which had slumped more than 40% this year, rose about 6.5% to $6.20.

Bitdeer was previously in talks with private credit firms to arrange about $100 million in financing, Bloomberg News reported in March. It was unclear if those discussions remain ongoing following Tether’s injection.

Bitcoin mining involves the operation of power-hungry computers that secure the blockchain, earning new tokens as a reward. In April, these rewards were halved as part of a programmed upgrade to the Bitcoin network called “the halving,” which occurs every four years. In essence, the change made it about half as profitable to be a Bitcoin miner.

Conversely, Bitcoin’s price reached a record high in March, driven in part by optimism surrounding newly-launched spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US. Bitcoin traded up around 0.7% at $68,800 on Friday.

Source: Forex-Markets-Economic Times