Bitdeer reports $50 million loss due to Bitcoin halving, increased R&D costs

Bitdeer Technologies reported a net loss of $50.1 million for the third quarter of 2024, with total revenue declining to $62 million from $87.3 million in the same period last year.

The company’s unaudited financial results, released on Nov. 18, attribute the decrease primarily to the impact of the April 2024 Bitcoin halving, increased global hash rate, decreased hosting revenue, and higher research and development expenses related to the SEAL02 chip development.

Gross profit dropped sharply to $2.8 million from $21.1 million in the third quarter of 2023, while adjusted EBITDA turned negative at $8.5 million compared to a positive $28 million a year earlier. Despite the losses, cash and cash equivalents rose to $291.3 million as of Sept. 30, up from $203.9 million in the previous quarter.

Bitdeer’s Chief Business Officer, Matt Kong, emphasized advancements in technological and strategic initiatives.

“In our ASICs business, we made substantial progress in the commercialization of our SEALMINER mining rigs,” Kong stated.

The company successfully launched its second-generation SEALMINER A2 mining machine series equipped with the SEAL02 chip. It features air-cooling and hydro-cooling models with hash rates of 226 TH/s and 446 TH/s, respectively, and a power efficiency ratio of 16.5 J/TH.

Mass production of the SEALMINER A2 series began in October, with the first production run expected to deliver 18 EH/s. These units will be used for self-mining and sold to external customers. “We are already engaged in discussions with several potential customers, and early demand is promising,” Kong added.

In the Cloud HPC and AI business, Bitdeer’s NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD system in Singapore achieved approximately 98% utilization in September. The company expanded a pilot program in Canada and is exploring leveraging its 2.5 GW power capacity across three continents to meet growing demand from high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.

Operationally, the total hash rate under management decreased to 17.1 EH/s from 21.2 EH/s in the third quarter of 2023. The decline was primarily due to the conversion of 100 MW of hosting capacity at the Texas facility to hydro-cooling for self-mining, and some customers discontinued hosting less efficient miners after the Bitcoin halving.

Self-mining revenue increased slightly to $31.5 million from $30.1 million, driven by a 27.9% increase in the average self-mining hash rate to 7.8 EH/s and higher…