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TORONTO, Ontario and BROSSARD, Qubec, May 28, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bitfarms Ltd.(Bitfarms, or the Company) (TSXV: BITF // OTC:BFARF), today provides a Bitcoin production update.

Bitcoin Production Update

Year-to-date, Bitfarms has mined and deposited in custody 1,006 Bitcoin, currently valued at approximately US$39 million, or approximately 5.5% of the Companys market capitalization as of the close of trading yesterday, May 27, 2021. Bitfarms achieved this milestone a full 9 days ahead of the schedule reported on April 16, 2021.

Based on public information of other publicly traded cryptocurrency mining companies, Bitfarms has mined and accumulated one of the largest reported amount of Bitcoin from mining activities in North America, year-to-date; and has done so with 100% hydroelectricity.

Since starting its Bitcoin Inventory Pilot Program in early January, Bitfarms has quickly climbed the ranks of publicly traded companies with Bitcoin on their balance sheet and has now earned the 13th spot for publicly traded companies on bitcointreasuries.org.

With approximately 1% of the Bitcoin network, Bitfarms is currently mining and adding approximately 7.8 Bitcoins a day to inventory at a cost of approximately US$9,500 per Bitcoin as of May 27, 2021. This means that Bitfarms is both adding Bitcoin to its balance sheet at one of the fastest rates and with some of the lowest costs in the world.

Since inception, we have worked at building a world-class and vertically-integrated mining company achieving high levels of efficiency. This year Bitfarms is experiencing our fastest rate of growth ever. We expect to more than double our installed hydropower infrastructure in Qubec, triple our operational hashrate in 2021 and be trading on both the TSX Venture Exchange and Nasdaq soon, said Emiliano Grodzki, Bitfarms Chief Executive Officer.

About Bitfarms Ltd.

Founded in 2017, Bitfarms is a Bitcoin mining company, running vertically integrated mining operations with onsite technical repair, proprietary data analytics and Company-owned electrical engineering and installation services to deliver high operational performance and uptime.

Having demonstrated rapid growth and stellar operations, Bitfarms became the first Bitcoin mining company to complete its long form prospectus with the Ontario Securities Commission and started trading on the TSX-V in July 2019. On February 24, 2021, Bitfarms was honoured to be announced as a Rising Star by the TSX-V.

Bitfarms has a diversified production platform with five industrial scale facilities located in Qubec. Each facility is 100% powered with environmentally friendly hydro power and secured with long-term power contracts. Bitfarms is currently the only publicly traded pure-play mining company audited by a Big Four audit firm.

To learn more about Bitfarms events, developments, and online communities:

Website:www.bitfarms.com

https://www.facebook.com/bitfarms/https://twitter.com/Bitfarms_iohttps://www.instagram.com/bitfarms/https://www.linkedin.com/company/bitfarms/

Defined Terms

Cautionary Statement

Trading in the securities of the Company should be considered highly speculative. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, forward-looking information) that are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. The information in this release regarding expectations in respect to the future level of Bitcoin inventory and about future plans and objectives of the Company are forward-looking information. Other forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, information concerning: the intentions, plans and future actions of the Company, as well as Bitfarms ability to successfully mine digital currency, revenue increasing as currently anticipated, the ability to profitably liquidate current and future digital currency inventory, volatility of network difficulty and digital currency prices and the potential resulting significant negative impact on the Companys operations, the construction and operation of expanded blockchain infrastructure as currently planned, and the regulatory environment for cryptocurrency in the applicable jurisdictions.

Any statements that involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as expects, or does not expect, is expected, anticipates or does not anticipate, plans, budget, scheduled, forecasts, estimates, believes or intends or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results may or could, would, might or will be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking information and are intended to identify forward-looking information.

This forward-looking information is based on assumptions and estimates of management of the Company at the time they were made, and involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such factors include, among others, risks relating to: the global economic climate; dilution; the Companys limited operating history; future capital needs and uncertainty of additional financing; the competitive nature of the industry; currency exchange risks; the need for the Company to manage its planned growth and expansion; the effects of product development and need for continued technology change; protection of proprietary rights; the effect of government regulation and compliance on the Company and the industry; network security risks; the ability of the Company to maintain properly working systems; reliance on key personnel; global economic and financial market deterioration impeding access to capital or increasing the cost of capital; and volatile securities markets impacting security pricing unrelated to operating performance. In addition, particular factors that could impact future results of the business of Bitfarms include, but are not limited to: the construction and operation of blockchain infrastructure may not occur as currently planned, or at all; expansion may not materialize as currently anticipated, or at all; the digital currency market; the ability to successfully mine digital currency; revenue may not increase as currently anticipated, or at all; it may not be possible to profitably liquidate the current digital currency inventory, or at all; a decline in digital currency prices may have a significant negative impact on operations; an increase in network difficulty may have a significant negative impact on operations; the volatility of digital currency prices; the anticipated growth and sustainability of hydroelectricity for the purposes of cryptocurrency mining in the applicable jurisdictions, the ability to complete current and future financings, any regulations or laws that will prevent Bitfarms from operating its business; historical prices of digital currencies and the ability to mine digital currencies that will be consistent with historical prices; an inability to predict and counteract the effects of COVID-19 on the business of the Company, including but not limited to the effects of COVID-19 on the price of digital currencies, capital market conditions, restriction on labour and international travel and supply chains; and, the adoption or expansion of any regulation or law that will prevent Bitfarms from operating its business, or make it more costly to do so. For further information concerning these and other risks and uncertainties, refer to the Companys filings on http://www.SEDAR.com including the annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2020, filed on April 7, 2021. The Company has also assumed that no significant events occur outside of Bitfarms normal course of business. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking information other than as required by law.

Contacts

Investor Relations:

CORE IR+1 516 222 2560Investors@bitfarms.com

US Media:

CORE IRJules Abraham, Director of Public Relationsjulesa@coreir.com

YAP GlobalMia Grodsky, Account Executivemia@yapglobal.com

Qubec Media:

Ryan Affaires publiques Marc Duchesne, Directeur / Directormarc@ryanap.com

The rest is here:
Bitfarms Mines 1000th Bitcoin with Hydroelectricity This Year - GlobeNewswire

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Just about the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem has gotten washed out in the past week, as news of government crackdowns and other negative headlines have dominated the discussion.

Not every coin has been plunging, however. One of the generally positive things about the decline in cryptocurrency values is that different assets are reacting in different ways to the selloff.

To be sure, the damage is widespread. Bitcoin has fallen 12% in the past week and Ether, the second most valuable cryptocurrency, is down 21%. Excluding stablecoins, whose values hover around $1 because they are pegged to the dollar, the top 12 coins have all fallen. But others have risen over that period.

Barrons screened for coins within the top 100 cryptos by market cap that have outperformed over the past week, and found several that have held up.

Source: coinmarketcap.com

They include coins that arent exactly household names, but that are being explored as potentially useful technologies: Polygon, Helium, Celsius, and Maker. Its dangerous to assume that the relative winners will hold up in the longer-term cryptocurrencies can move sharply based on trading on opaque unregulated markets and may suffer from low liquidity. With smaller coins in particular, investors need to understand the platform they are buying into because they are essentially investing in an early-stage venture capital start-up.

That said, projects that held up in the selloff are worth watching. One reason some of these coins did well may have been because they dodged some of the overall crypto networks problems during the selloff.

One thing we saw during the panic was that both centralized and many decentralized exchanges had issues keeping up with demand, Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of crypto fund provider Bitwise Asset Management, told Barrons in an email. Many centralized exchanges simply went down for periods of time during the selloff, as they were overloaded by traders.

That may have been the case with Polygon, formerly called Matic, the 14th most valuable cryptocurrency. It is a so-called Layer 2 technology thats built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, and is meant to make transactions faster and less expensive. Hougan thinks that Polygon was able to bypass some of the congestion in the system during the selloff because it is meant to process more transactions. Because of this approach, their network wasnt congested, he wrote. As a result, users were able to trade with ease on [Polygon] while other approaches faced challenges.

Polygon is involved in some of the hottest areas of cryptocurrencies, including working with trading platforms to make it easier to trade non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Right now, trading NFTs can be expensive because of gas fees associated with using trading platforms.

Polygon may have increased for another reason, too it appears to be better for the environment than some other coins. It uses a proof of stake system to validate transactions on the blockchain. Bitcoin uses proof of work, a system thats much more energy intensive. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has criticized Bitcoins impact on climate change, causing some proof of stake tokens to outperform proof of work ones.

Helium is a particularly unusual cryptocurrency that is part of a project meant to decentralize wireless communications. Its aim is to get households and businesses to install small telecom hubs on their property almost like mini cell towers and then reward them with a token called HNT. The company says it has nearly 42,000 hot spots around the world. It has received funding from New York venture-capital firm Union Square Ventures.

The Celsius network is known for allowing people to earn interest in their crypto holdings, or to borrow crypto. Celsius says that it has more than 700,000 users and that it is gaining nearly 100,000 users a month. Lending and borrowing are increasingly popular on crypto platforms, and Celsius is becoming a bigger hub for that.

Maker is a token thats part of another unique finance project within cryptocurrencies. MakerDAO is an organization that created a decentralized stablecoin called DAI that can be lent out without intermediaries. Maker is a key hub in the defi movement that is trying to move traditional banking activities to a decentralized network where there are no gatekeepers and people can more easily lend or borrow currencies. The Maker tokens give users a voting stake in the creation of the market, and will presumably rise in value if DAI is used more frequently.

Write to avi.salzman@barrons.com

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The Cryptocurrencies That Outperformed During Bitcoin's Crash - Barron's

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Welcome back to Cook's Kitchen!

Last week I explained what the Bitcoin faithful were missing about their precious "digital gold" in this article and video...

Bitcoin Crash Lessons: Passionate Belief Still Needs Risk Management

And in the past week, I've had many conversations about those views, even publicly on Twitter. You can always follow me @KevinBCook to eavesdrop in real-time, but I'll share one exchange that was right up our alley.

First, the premise: the acerbic wit of one OJ Renick, anchor extraordinaire of the TD Ameritrade Network investing broadcast, coined an important new market acronym Wednesday to describe, and warn, Bitcoin faithful about what was happening in their minds and margin-based accounts.

It was MUD: Maniacal Unwavering Devotion.

And it was a beautiful contribution to the conversation I began last week.

Second, the interaction: Immediately, OJ's tweet about his article explaining MUD (published on his LinkedIn blog) drew some very important fire...

A crypto thought leader wrote...

"I don't know a single *crypto* thought leader that warned people of the upcoming *bitcoin* crash" (quoting OJ Renick from his article).

He proceeds...

"Why should I (a public proponent of accumulating bitcoin for the long term) encourage people to gamble their bitcoin by trying to time unpredictable markets?"

And here was my immediate reply...

Exactly the question needs to be asked & answered. I proposed last week that "faithful fundamentalists" ignore that even a revolutionary new asset class trades at market prices, susceptible to human emotional extremes (bubbles & crashes). Think of newbs following & buying at $60K.

My point, as always here, was that it's fine for BTC "thought leaders" to engage in fantasies of accumulating their precious for the "inevitable" surges to $100K and $500K, but the average follower with less than $10K to spare can't really handle or understand the 50% crashes.

Until Bitcoin has quantifiable use cases and big institutional support (think buying from BlackRock, JPMorgan, and central banks), the fundamental value of it is hard to model, let alone quantify. That means it's trading mostly on emotional speculation and passionately-held beliefs. Or influential whims and changes of heart (@elon if you musk ask who).

Don't get me wrong. In my piece last week, I argued that Bitcoin is an entirely new asset class for the digital age. And there are good reasons that it's 10X better -- and more volatile -- than that barbarous relic gold.

So maybe we should warn new BTC "investors" about possibilities for "wild randomness," as the great Benoit Mandelbrot described the central feature of complex and chaotic markets. After I understood what he and Nassim Taleb were trying to teach us about volatility in human-built systems, I realized that "when anything can happen, there is no standard for deviation."

The Semi Ecosystem is a Rich Jungle of Investing Opportunities

While some "coiners" look for opportunity in the hundreds of alt-coins that may go from a thousandth of a cent to 5 cents -- for a 5,000X windfall -- those dreams will remain as infrequent as they are random.

What I'm encouraging investors to do is look at the companies building the actual infrastructure of the Crypto-Blockchain space.

And that's what I've been focused on for the month of May with deeper dives into the sales and earnings growth of Micron MU, Applied Materials AMAT, and NVIDIA.

On Wednesday morning, I published a piece on ASML Holding N.V. ASML the Netherlands-based giant of photolithography for integrated circuit (IC) manufacture.

That article spins a few quick circles around many of the players that we find most important in the buildout of the Nanosphere. That was my new term last year for the world of sub-10 nanometer technology that was becoming crucial to the next stages of ICs for phones, cars, medicine, and aerospace.

But then I found that futurist and technology guru George Gilder calls it the Nanocosm, and I'm going with him since he is probably the best independent semiconductor researcher on the planet. He is also the author of the 1989 book Microcosm: The Quantum Era in Economics and Technology, which set the stage for a whole generation of investors and technologists to understand this invisible world of power laws.

Be sure to check out the article on ASML linked above to find out which mega-investor just became the 5th largest holder of ASML shares in Q1.

NVIDIA Is Taking It Down, Way Down

In the video attached to this article, I talk a bit about NVIDIA NVDA innovation heading down to the 5nm level for its next-gen GPU architecture, Hopper. Since NVIDIA contracts Taiwan Semiconductor, or TSMC, to build this hardware, word gets out in the supply chain and DigiTimes has been reporting on this "mystery" chipset for the past year.

What is known with a little more certainty is that NVIDIA has orders in with TSMC for 7nm technology that goes into Ampere GPU cards. According to Kara Copple writing for WePC.com "TSMC will be producingApples AAPL 5nm ARM-based processors and also AMDs Ryzen 5000 series of CPUs. Its fair to say TSMC has some big projects on its hands."

And for TSMC to build any of this requires the sophisticated laser etching technology of ASML.

I taped the video on Wednesday morning before NVIDIA reported its latest quarterly results. As I type now, investors are reacting to stunning growth in the company's two primary segments:

Gaming revenue of $2.76 billion was up 106% from a year ago. Datacenter revenue of $2.05 billion was up 79% from this time last year.

They even got a boost from crypto mining as they offer that niche market new specialized GPUs for massively parallel, high-speed processing. More importantly, current Q2 revenue guidance at $6.3 billion was more than 14% higher than the analyst consensus of $5.5B! That has investment banks jumping over each other to raise price targets north of $750.

After NVIDIA's show-stopping annual GPU Tech Conference, held virtually in April, I wrote about my own $750 PT on NVDA and how Datacenter was on pace to overtake Gaming this year. Here's what I wrote then...

Jefferies semiconductor analyst Mark Lipacis wrote a powerful research report in September that the former is growing at 40% CAGR vs just 10% for the latter.

Based on that math, this is the year that Datacenter takes over Gaming in revenues. And based on his 5-year projections, Lipacis sees Gaming growing to a nearly $12 billion business while DC blows the doors off to $34 billion.

For perspective, this year's total revenue is only expected to be in the neighborhood of $22.5 billion.

To be clear, Lipacis was inspired to write this new report after NVIDIA announced it had an agreement to buy UK-based ARM Holdings for $40 billion. That deal remains controversial -- for everyone but NVDA -- and also uncertain in terms of the probability of actually closing any time soon.

The primary issues revolve around ARM's technology for mobile devices which is licensed to everyone from Apple to Qualcomm.

ARM also deals in CPUs (serial processing), which is part of what made it attractive to NVIDIA's GPU (parallel processing) expertise. But one of the most important elements to keep in mind when talking about Jensen Huang & Co. is that he surrounds himself with the best engineering talent in the world, just like Elon.

And that's why they develop complete "stacks" of hardware and software in the CUDA platform to give power tools to data miners and modelers, automation innovators, and scientific researchers expanding the limits of our knowledge and technology in medicine, energy, aerospace, materials, autos, and smart cities.

Gilder on the Nanocosm

I mentioned that my ASML article has details on the new 5th largest investor. The video actually has a good screenshot of the top ten.

But I also want to share why George Gilder is a new buyer of ASML shares, which have more than doubled in the past year from $325 to over $650. I'll let him explain in his own words...

"Without Taiwan Semiconductors and crucially ASML, your iPhone 12's M-1 processor chip would not exist. Without ASML, TSM would not be able to make Huawei's 5G HiSilicon processors. The same is true for Samsung and your Galaxy phone.

"ASML is the key. ASML's technical lead in the field is so great, and growing, that it has essentially 100% market share of the photolithography market for single-digit-nanometer geometries."

The Semi Ecosystem is a complex jungle. As complicated as NVIDIA's proposed acquisition of ARM may be, they also contract with the other big Asian chip foundry, Samsung, to spread out their risk away from TSMC -- and maybe to avoid any technology IP slipping into view of Apple.

For this jungle, it pays to pay attention to a wily and brilliant veteran like Gilder, who knows that a premier "arms dealer" like ASML and its invisible technologies may be one of the smartest bets of all. Be sure to check out my ASML article to learn about his latest work on the Blockchain.

Disclosure: I own NVDA shares for the Zacks TAZR Trader portfolio.

Bitcoin, Like the Internet Itself, Could Change Everything

Blockchain and cryptocurrency has sparked one of the most exciting discussion topics of a generation. Some call it the Internet of Money and predict it could change the way money works forever. If true, it could do to banks what Netflix did to Blockbuster and Amazon did to Sears. Experts agree were still in the early stages of this technology, and as it grows, it will create several investing opportunities.

Zacks has just revealed 3 companies that can help investors capitalize on the explosive profit potential of Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies with significantly less volatility than buying them directly.

See 3 crypto-related stocks now >>

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free reportMicron Technology, Inc. (MU) : Free Stock Analysis ReportNVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) : Free Stock Analysis ReportApple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis ReportASML Holding N.V. (ASML) : Free Stock Analysis ReportApplied Materials, Inc. (AMAT) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research

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Bitcoin Investing vs. Invisible Hardware of the Nanocosm - Yahoo Finance

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