Bitcoin mining firm, Core Scientific, has officially gone public. The blockchain infrastructure firm debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange yesterday January 20 with the tickers “CORZ” and “CORZW” for its shares and warrants respectively. The announcement came after Core Scientific completed a merger with Power & Digital Infrastructure Acquisition Corp. (“XPDI”) through a SPAC.

Net carbon-neutral Bitcoin mining company goes public

Core Scientific, one of the biggest Bitcoin mining and blockchain infrastructure companies in North America, is now trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange as a public company. They announced this in a press release, noting that the debut on Nasdaq has followed their merger with Power and Digital Infrastructure Acquisition Corp. (XPDI) through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) arrangement.

The merger with Core Scientific was unanimously approved by XPDI’s Board of Directors and its shareholders. Speaking of the public trading debut, Mike Levitt, co-chairman and CEO of Core Scientific said that the move represents a significant milestone in the firm’s goal to grow its capacity. He adds that the company is more excited about what comes after the move.

As one of the largest publicly-traded blockchain infrastructure providers and digital asset miners in North America, we are focused on growing our capacity, defending and securing the blockchain ecosystem, and building long-term shareholder value, Levitt said.

Core Scientific is a net carbon neutral blockchain infrastructure provider, generating over 50% of its power from non-carbon emitting sources from local providers. In 2021, the firm reported that it operated a personal mining fleet of approximately 67,000 “state-of-the-act ASICs, reaching a hashrate of up to 6.6 exahashes per second (6.6 EH/s).

Added to operating its Bitcoin mining operation, Core Scientific also derives up to half of its revenue from providing Bitcoin mining services and mining infrastructure setup services for other institutional miners. It reported operating over 80,000 ASICs (6.9 EH/s) for third-party hosting clients. This brings its total hashrate combined 13.5 exahash of processing power at the end of last year. Core Scientific holds over 5,300 Bitcoins on its balance sheet.

Bitcoin miners expanding despite looming regulatory pressure

Like Core Scientific, other Bitcoin mining outfits have been growing their operations in one way or the other. Earlier this year, Bitfarms announced that it bought the dip, adding 1000 Bitcoins to their balance sheet.

Bitcoin mining has also continued to be profitable for miners despite the price volatility of Bitcoin and the widespread regulatory uncertainty towards the industry. Of recent, a subcommittee in the US senate held a hearing on the environmental impact of Bitcoin and crypto proof-of-work mining. The outcome of the hearing which feature up to five mining industry key figures was mostly that the committee got acquainted with the basic concepts of the mining industry and how things stood.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, Bitcoin mining is coming under significant threat from regulators. Russia’s central bank recently disclosed that it planned to ban the use of cryptocurrencies, as well as crypto mining in the country. The country’s apex bank is concerned that crypto poses risks to Russia’s financial stability, citizens’ wellbeing, and monetary policy sovereignty according to a Reuters report.