Riot Blockchain announces purchase of additional 1,000 Bitmain S17 Pro Antminers

Riot Blockchain, Inc. (NASDAQ: RIOT) ("Riot" or the "Company"), one of the few Nasdaq listed public cryptocurrency mining companies in the United States, announced the purchase of an additional 1,000 next generation Bitmain S17 Pro Antminers for approximately USD $1.35 million from BitmainTech PTE. LTD. ("Bitmain"). On December 4, 2019, Riot announced that it had purchased 3,000 S17 Pro miners. Once these total 4,000 miners are received and operational, Riot's Oklahoma City mining facility will utilize its 12 megawatt ("MW") available electric power supply mining with the newest generation of S17 Pro miners. This purchase was funded from Riot's available cash on hand.

Riot Blockchain, Inc. (NASDAQ: RIOT) ("Riot" or the "Company"), one of the few Nasdaq listed public cryptocurrency mining companies in the United States, announced the purchase of an additional 1,000 next generation Bitmain S17 Pro Antminers for approximately USD $1.35 million from BitmainTech PTE. LTD. ("Bitmain"). On December 4, 2019, Riot announced that it had purchased 3,000 S17 Pro miners. Once these total 4,000 miners are received and operational, Riot's Oklahoma City mining facility will utilize its 12 megawatt ("MW") available electric power supply mining with the newest generation of S17 Pro miners. This purchase was funded from Riot's available cash on hand.

The latest generation of Bitcoin ("BTC") Application-Specific Integrated Circuit ("ASIC") miners from Bitmain are markedly more cost efficient, estimated from product specifications at approximately a 50% improvement in hardware power efficiency, as compared to the S9 miners currently in use by Riot. As previously reported, Riot's gross margin percent, computed as mining revenues in excess of cost of revenues (exclusive of depreciation and amortization), was 14% in the three-month period ended September 30, 2019. The new generation miners are anticipated to generate approximately 440% of the  hashrate while only consuming an estimated 220% of the electricity usage, as compared to the S9 miners currently in use by Riot. This upgrade will allow Riot to significantly increase its operating hashrate at the Oklahoma City mining facility with fewer total miners using the same or less total electricity.

Riot estimates aggregate operating hashrate at the Oklahoma City mining facility, assuming full utilization of the facility's current total 12 megawatt ("MW") available electric supply and deployment of the total 4,000 next generation miners is estimated to be approximately 248 petahash per second ("PH/s"). This would represent an estimated 240% over Riot's present average mining hashrate. Riot anticipates that the 4,000 new miners will be deployed early in the first quarter of 2020 and are expected to represent over 90% of the Oklahoma City's mining facilities total current capacity. Pending future actual power costs and Bitcoin network economic conditions, it is expected that a portion of the existing S9 miners may also continue to be operational, especially during periods of low-cost electricity.