Cango Acquires 32 EH/s Deployed Bitcoin Miners from Bitmain in $256M Mining Pivot

An NYSE-listed car dealership platform has acquired 32 EH/s of hashrate from Bitmain for $256 million as part of a Bitcoin mining pivot and has already reported the production of 393 BTC in November.

Cango (NYSE: CANG), a Shanghai-headquartered automotive transaction service platform, announced last month that it completed a cash-settled transaction to acquire 32 EH/s of active Bitcoin miners from the Chinese Bitcoin miner manufacturing giant.

Specifically, Cango purchased the on-rack miners from Bitmain Technologies Georgia Limited and Bitmain Development Limited, indicating that Bitmain could continue serving as the colocation provider.

Additionally, Cango has agreed to acquire additional on-rack Bitcoin miners, totaling 18 EH/s of hashrate, from Golden TechGen—a company owned by Bitmain’s former chief financial officer, Max Hua—and other entities through the issuance of $144 million worth of Cango’s common stock.

Earlier this month, Cango reported mining 363.9 BTC in November with the deployed 32 EH/s and did not liquidate any assets. This production made Cango the fifth-largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining firm by realized hashrate and the third-largest by deployed hashrate, just behind CleanSpark (33.7 EH/s).

Cango did not specify the hardware models it purchased from Bitmain. However, with a unit cost of $8 per TH/s and Bitmain Georgia as the counterparty, it suggests that Cango may have acquired 50 EH/s of the Antminer S19XP series that Bitmain Technologies Georgia imported since 2023.

Blockspace Media, which first mentioned Cango’s acquisition on social media, corroborated that Cango’s initial fleet “consists entirely of Antminer S19 XPs,” citing a person close to the matter.

This transaction also indirectly confirms TheEnergyMag’s previous reports that Bitmain had emerged as one of the largest proprietary Bitcoin mining firms since the bear market, rivaling its major customers while continuing to sell hardware to them.

Bitmain’s decision to sell the on-rack miners came as the economics of Bitcoin mining moderately recovered after Bitcoin’s market price approached $100,000 in November. With the network hashprice rebounding to $63/PH/s, the revenue per kilowatt-hour for an S19XP has increased to $0.12.

However, it remains to be seen how these economics will evolve in the long term for S19XPs leading into the next halving, as the S19XP was Bitmain’s flagship hardware model during the 2021 halving epoch, compared to the latest generation S21XP.

Founded in 2010, Cango reported revenues of $3.84 million for the third quarter of this year, with total current assets of $564 million as of September 30. Cango’s Bitcoin mining revenue in November alone was already a multiple of its revenue from the previous quarter, though its hosting costs remain to be disclosed in the fourth quarter earnings report.

Following the Bitcoin mining pivot announcement, Cango’s share price rose from $3.41 in mid-November to $6.91 as of Tuesday, giving it a market capitalization of $500 million.