Margins of up to 90% give energy firms that mine bitcoin an edge

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When Beowulf Mining Plc built a data center in Montana for a major Bitcoin miner in 2020, the three-decade old energy company saw a big opportunity.

Whereas its client Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. was reliant on third parties for electricity, Beowulf had direct access to power in what could be a profitable play if it was to start mining Bitcoin itself. 

The bet paid off and in filings to take its crypto offshoot TeraWulf public in 2021, the business projected having 800 megawatts of mining capacity and 10% of the Bitcoin network’s current computing power by 2025.

The company is just one of a handful of energy groups to discover Bitcoin mining from clients before building out their own facilities, including CleanSpark Inc., Stronghold Digital Mining Inc. and Iris Energy Ltd. And with lower operational risks and wider profit margins, energy firms are becoming a major force in crypto.

“Energy companies tend to be very conservative by nature and they are often regulated," said Paul Prager, chief executive officer of TeraWulf. “We are early adopters because we had a front-row seat in our partnership with Marathon."

While miners can have a decent margin on 5 cents per kilowatt, those with a direct energy source and power assets tend to enjoy a much lower price, said Gregory Beard, chief executive of Stronghold. 

“If you are buying power from a producer and paying a third-party operator to manage the data center, you are going to have lower margins than those that do it themselves," Beard said.

That extra profit could give energy companies an edge over competitors as the Bitcoin mining industry’s lucrative margins have been compressing. With the price of Bitcoin still down 40% from a high in November and the war in Ukraine