Atlas Mining is migrating a large supply of Bitcoin miners to the US

Singapore-headquartered Atlas Mining, which previously had extensive Bitcoin mining operations in China, is set to move a significant amount of hash rate to North America.

Atlas Mining said in an announcement on Tuesday that it has signed a partnership with U.S-based mining colocation provider Compute North for over 100 megawatts (MW) of hosting capacity. The deployment for Atlas Mining's equipment will start in Q1 next year, the firms said in the announcement, which will produce about 3.7 exahashes per second (EH/s) of hash rate at full deployment. 

The deal with Compute North comes just weeks after Atlas Mining announced another hosting partnership with U.S-based Core Scientific also for more than 100 megawatts, which is being deployed over the next 15 months.

The moves are part of Atlas' global migration and expansion plan after China shut down Bitcoin mining operations over the summer. The company is also focusing on other top destinations, such as North Europe and Central Asia.

Atlas Mining is the Bitcoin mining arm of Shanghai-based crypto and blockchain fund Fundamental Labs, which raised a $44 million Bitcoin mining fund in 2019 to invest in tens of thousands of new equipment at the time. Its operations were mainly located in major Chinese mining hubs prior to the country's crackdown on the space in June.

Atlas Mining said in a statement today that it has bought over 200,000 units of the newest generation of equipment to date and "aims to continue this trend over the next few years." It said it has so far reserved over 400 megawatts of capacity for self-mining through local hosting partners in different regions. 

Bitcoin hash rate growth slows down — for now

As The Block reported previously, while Bitcoin's hash rate had steadily recovered half of its loss from the crash in June, Bitcoin mining firms that previously had operations in China still have a long way to go to complete the migration process. This is due to the global shortage of hosting capacity.

Dave Perrill, CEO of Compute North, told The Block in an email last month that the firm has a number of Chinese customer migrating. "But we were already fully sold out in Q3 and Q4, so [the] migrations are occurring next year for these clients. We are seeing deployments ranging from 30MW to 150MW," he said.

That could help to explain the slowdown of Bitcoin's hashing power growth — at least in the short term — which is likely going to resume at a higher rate early next year. Bitcoin's mining difficulty adjusted on Tuesday with merely a 1% increase while the average Bitcoin hash rate remains at about 145 EH/s, based on The Block's Data Dashboard.

While U.S-based colocation providers are fueling a mining infrastructure boom in North America in order to fulfill expansion and relocation demands, Bitcoin mining firms are also building facilities themselves through joint ventures in the region. This has helped it to replace China as the destination with the largest market share of Bitcoin mining.

U.S-listed BIT Mining, previously known as 500.com with major operations inside China, said on Monday it is investing another $11 million in its Ohio mining site that is being jointly developed by Viking Data Centers. The investment top-up will increase the facility's capacity by another 65 MW and bring the total capacity up to 150 MW.