Bitcoin Miner Crusoe Energy Secures 50 BTC on Newly Launched Liquidity Platform Block Green
Block Green aims to unlock liquidity from institutional investors for miners and incentivize green mining.
Bitcoin miner Crusoe Energy has sold 50 BTC ($1.3 million) of future revenue on newly launched liquidity platform Block Green, the two firms told CoinDesk.
Switzerland-based Block Green has built a marketplace where liquidity providers looking for bitcoin-native investments can buy future hashrate, or computing power, over a specified period of time. The liquidity platform includes “know-your-miner” information about the miner's financials and operations.
The Crusoe transaction is the largest to date on the platform, while another one for 7.5 BTC of Merkle Standard's hashrate closed this week.
Under the deal, Crusoe will direct bitcoin rewards from 220 petahash/second (PH/s) of mining over 90 days to Swissborg, a Switzerland-based crypto exchange.
Block Green focused on "offering attractive and scalable yields to bitcoin holders," which has "triggered a lot of demand from institutions holding bitcoin" given that bitcoin yields offered elsewhere remain low, said Sebastien Hess, CEO and co-founder.
"The biggest challenge with hashpower sales has been finding natural buyers," and Block Green has "prioritized finding holders of bitcoin who are looking to find a way to generate a yield," said Chase Lochmiller, CEO and co-founder of Crusoe.
The platform currently hosts 40% of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners and is onboarding more every week, said Hess. It is also working on a sustainability evaluation framework for miners' operations. There is a "growing demand for green BTC among LPs, who are even willing to pay a premium for it," said Hess.
Read more: Here Are Six New Projects Looking to Mitigate Bitcoin Mining’s Energy Footprint
Eliza Gkritsi
Eliza Gkritsi is a CoinDesk contributor focused on the intersection of crypto and AI, having previously covered mining for two years. She previously worked at TechNode in Shanghai and has graduated from the London School of Economics, Fudan University, and the University of York. She owns 25 WLD. She tweets as @egreechee.