NEW YORK, Dec. 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bit Digital, Inc.
(Nasdaq: BTBT) ("Bit Digital" or the "Company"), a digital asset
mining company headquartered in New
York, is pleased to announce that it has formally commenced
Ethereum staking operations. Bit Digital intends to
delegate, or stake, its ETH holdings to an
Ethereum validator node to help secure and strengthen
the blockchain network. Stakers are compensated for this commitment
in the form of a reward of the native network token.
This marks an expansion from Bit Digital's core
bitcoin mining operation to also validating
transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. While the
Company remains bullish on bitcoin, and supporting the
bitcoin blockchain, it expects to derive revenue from
the Ethereum network via validator rewards.
The Company's staking operations are enhanced by a new
partnership with Blockdaemon, the leading institutional-grade
blockchain infrastructure company for node management and staking.
Following a similar mechanism to traditional Ethereum
staking, Bit Digital will also participate in liquid staking via
Portara, the liquid staking protocol developed by Blockdaemon and
StakeWise and the first of its kind tailored to institutions.
Liquid staking allows participants to 1) achieve greater capital
efficiency by utilizing their staked ETH as collateral
and 2) withdraw from staked positions earlier than natively
possible by trading their staked ETH tokens on the
secondary market.
Unlike other liquid staking solutions, Portara's key
differentiator is that it ensures that users can only interact with
verified counterparties. As a result, several regulated
institutions which were previously unable to participate in liquid
staking have now on-boarded with Portara and are actively liquid
staking.
As of December 20, the Company had
7,904 ETH and 2,004 sETH-h with a combined worth of
approximately $12.1 million. 2,164
ETH were actively staked as of that date, using either
native staking or liquid staking protocols. The Company intends to
continue accumulating Ethereum and stake substantially
all of its ETH position over time.
Bryan Bullett, Bit Digital's CEO,
commented: "We are excited to expand from our core
bitcoin mining business into validating transactions
on the Ethereum blockchain. This diversification into
another blue-chip digital asset ecosystem carries the goal of
creating a new, predictable, and recurring stream of digital
rewards. To be clear, we will continue to invest in and
opportunistically expand our mining operations. Together, we
believe bitcoin mining and ETH staking
are complementary business lines that will enhance our overall
margin and return profiles. It's an exciting development for Bit
Digital, and one that we ultimately believe will maximize value for
all stakeholders."
Bit Digital's Chief Strategy Officer, Sam Tabar, added: "We are extremely bullish on
the Ethereum network. Following the network's
transition to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, we expect
ETH will exhibit deflationary properties over time as
net issuance is substantially reduced and
ETH-denominated fees are burned. The notion that the
transition will decrease the network's energy consumption by 99% is
also extremely compelling to us given our focus on sustainability.
Ethereum serves as the foundation for the smart
contract economy and DeFi broadly, and we are excited to increase
our exposure to the network and support yet another leading
blockchain."
Blockdaemon CEO and Founder Konstantin
Richter shared that "Blockdaemon is proud to partner with
Bit Digital and provide them with best-in-class institutional-grade
infrastructure for their new strategic PoS holdings. This new
partnership gives Bit Digital full access to Blockdaemon's suite of
institutional staking solutions allowing them to increase their
earned rewards from their crypto holdings. Blockdaemon
was built from the ground up to provide institutions with products
and services to enable them to scale and build blockchain-based
businesses."
About Bit Digital
Bit Digital, Inc. is a bitcoin mining company
headquartered in New York City.
Our mining operations are located in North America. For additional information,
please contact ir@bit-digital.com or visit our website
at www.bit-digital.com.
About Blockdaemon
Blockdaemon is the leading independent blockchain node
infrastructure to stake, scale, and deploy nodes with
institutional-grade security and monitoring. Supporting 60+
cutting-edge blockchain networks in the cloud and on bare metal
servers globally, Blockdaemon is used by exchanges, custodians,
crypto platforms, financial institutions and
developers to connect commercial stakeholders to blockchains. We
power the blockchain economy by simplifying the process of
deploying nodes and creating scalable enterprise blockchain
solutions via APIs, high availability clusters,
auto-decentralization and auto-healing of nodes. For more
information, please visit https://blockdaemon.com/. Press inquiries
can be directed to Press@blockdaemon.com.
Investor Notice
Investing in our securities involves a high degree of risk.
Before making an investment decision, you should carefully consider
the risks, uncertainties and forward-looking statements described
under "Risk Factors" in Item 3.D of our most recent Annual Report
on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021. If any material risk was to
occur, our business, financial condition or results of operations
would likely suffer. In that event, the value of our securities
could decline and you could lose part or all of your investment.
The risks and uncertainties we describe are not the only ones
facing us. Additional risks not presently known to us or that we
currently deem immaterial may also impair our business operations.
In addition, our past financial performance may not be a reliable
indicator of future performance, and historical trends should not
be used to anticipate results in the future. Future changes in the
network-wide mining difficulty rate or bitcoin hash
rate may also materially affect the future performance of Bit
Digital's production of bitcoin. Actual operating
results will vary depending on many factors including network
difficulty rate, total hash rate of the network, the operations of
our facilities, the status of our miners, and other factors. See
"Safe Harbor Statement" below.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release may contain certain "forward-looking
statements" relating to the business of Bit Digital, Inc., and its
subsidiary companies. All statements, other than statements of
historical fact included herein are "forward-looking statements."
These forward-looking statements are often identified by the use of
forward-looking terminology such as "believes," "expects," or
similar expressions, involving known and unknown risks and
uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations
reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, they
do involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, and these
expectations may prove to be incorrect. Investors should not place
undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak
only as of the date of this press release. The Company's actual
results could differ materially from those anticipated in these
forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors,
including those discussed in the Company's periodic reports that
are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available
on its website at http://www.sec.gov. All forward-looking
statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its
behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors.
Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does
not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements.
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SOURCE Bit Digital, Inc.