Hut 8 Mining (HUT.T) is a Toronto-based company focused on mining bitcoin. The company is positioning itself to capitalize on bitcoin’s latest surge which sent the cryptocurrency well over USD$40,000. With an $11.8 million dollar equipment loan in mid January, Hut 8 was able to secure 5,400 units of Whatsminer M30S bitcoin mining machines, adding 475 petahashes per second to its mining capacity over the next six months. Operations are currently located in Drumheller and Medicine Hat, Alberta with 94 ADA datacenters, 104 max megawatts and 1031 petahashes per second. At the end of January, the company finalized plans to repay its $20 million capital loan, strengthening its balance sheet and cash flow. With Tesla buying $1.5 billion in bitcoin, companies like Hut 8 Mining have a lot of headroom for blue sky. If all of that was as confusing as IKEA assembly instructions, you’re in the right place. Hi, I’m Maddy Grace and this is Five Easy Questions where we break down the mystery of the markets for new investors. I am speaking with Hut 8 Mining CEO, Jaime Leverton, to get a clearer picture of the company, cryptocurrency and its investment potential. Tune in! (Transcription below)
Transcript
Maddy Grace
Hut 8 Mining is a Toronto based company focused on mining Bitcoin. The company is positioning itself to capitalize on Bitcoin’s latest surge, which sent the cryptocurrency well over forty thousand US dollars with an eleven point eight million dollar equipment loan in mid-January, Hut 8 was able to secure five thousand four hundred units of Whatsminer M30S Bitcoin mining machines, adding four hundred and seventy five petahashes per second to its mining capacity over the next six months. Operations are currently located in Drumheller and Medicine Hat, Alberta. With Tesla buying one point five billion dollars in Bitcoin, companies like Hut 8 Mining have a lot of potential. If you have no idea what any of those words just meant, you are in the right place. Hi, I’m Maddy Grace. This is Five Easy Questions where we break down the markets for new investors. Today, I’m speaking with Hut 8 Mining CEO Jamie Leverton to get a clearer picture of the company, cryptocurrency and its investment potential. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jamie.
Jaime Leverton
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Maddy Grace
OK, I’m going to jump right in. What is Bitcoin and what does it mean to mine it?
Jaime Leverton
Bitcoin is the ultimate store of value. It is secure, it is finite, it is portable, and it cannot be debased. Bitcoin mining is the system that ads transactions and provides security to the bitcoin blockchain, and it’s the process through which new Bitcoin is added to the market.
Maddy Grace
Amazing. OK, what is a petahash?
Jaime Leverton
So a petahash is the quadrillion hashes per second, so Hut 8 Mining has over a petahash actively in production and it means that how much is actively being put into the network to mine new Bitcoin every day. The hash rate is actually a measurement of how many times the Bitcoin network is able to attempt to complete the calculations in a single second. So one petahash is a quadrillion hashes per second.
Maddy Grace
Oh, my gosh, I wasn’t even saying it right, OK, this is very mathematical. OK.
Jaime Leverton
It’s all math. The entire premise behind Bitcoin is based in cryptography. It’s all just math.
Maddy Grace
OK, amazing. What is an online wallet?
Jaime Leverton
So an online wallet is a place where your bitcoin can be securely stored, so unlike fiat currency that has a paper element, Bitcoin is a digital currency and therefore it’s stored in digital wallets that are secured to the user. They’re accessible through a password and only accessible by the owner of that password.
Maddy Grace
Cool, is that, like, not dissimilar to your Apple wallet on your phone, but it’s not connected to a bank, or is it completely different from that?
Jaime Leverton
It’s a bit different from that and certainly how it’s actually built is different from that, and then there are different kinds of wallets. There are cold wallets and wallets.
Maddy Grace
Okay
Jaime Leverton
Which a cold wallet means your bitcoins are actually stored offline and a hot wallet, it’s stored actively online.
Maddy Grace
Oh, that’s fun. OK, what’s the difference between buying Bitcoin and investing in a Bitcoin miner?
Jaime Leverton
So buying bitcoin is a process that’s done online. You then acquire Bitcoin, you would buy it through an exchange and you would store it in a digital wallet. Whereas when you invest in a Bitcoin miner that’s publicly traded, such as Hut 8. We trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange or over the counter in the US and we trade just like a normal equity. So you can put it in your RRSP account for your RSEP account, just like you would any other stock. But because what we do as an organization, is we mined bitcoins, so we create new Bitcoin every day and we also hold a significant amount of Bitcoin on our balance sheet. So our stock moves up when Bitcoin moves up. And therefore it’s a nice way to get a proxy to Bitcoin, but as a traditional equity.
Maddy Grace
OK, and last question, what are your ESG guidelines or ways you try to practice sustainability?
Jaime Leverton
So we have the benefit of having all of our operations located in Alberta, so we have just over one hundred and eight megawatts of maximum capacity between our sites in Medicine Hat and Drumheller, and they take advantage of a mix of natural gas and wind as their power source and as the province of Alberta continues to make significant investments in their renewable energy program. That is something that that we benefit from – an increasing amount of renewable energy in the mix of the energy that we consume as well. And then from a diversity perspective, where diversity is absolutely a core tenant, as I came into Hut 8, our leadership team, which has has been added to quite a bit since I joined on December 1st, shows that diversity within our team. And it’s certainly something that you’ll continue to see as a priority from Hut 8.
Maddy Grace
Oh, that’s amazing. I can’t even tell you how excited I was when I looked you up. I was like, a woman. I get to say to a woman, OK.
Jaime Leverton
I know it’s very exciting.
Maddy Grace
Oh, it’s so refreshing. I can’t even tell you. OK, now I just have a really quick rapid fire round.
Jaime Leverton
OK, I’m ready.
Maddy Grace
Ok. Tea or coffee?
Jaime Leverton
Coffee in the morning tea in the evening.
Maddy Grace
What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Jaime Leverton
Have a cup of coffee and do my yoga.
Maddy Grace
Oh, that’s good. What is your favorite sport to watch?
Jaime Leverton
Oh, I have to say, rugby with hockey is a close second.
Maddy Grace
What is your favorite sport to play?
Jaime Leverton
Oh, golly. I’m not very coordinated. I’m not afraid to admit it, so I’m a runner, but I’m really not a team sport person.
Maddy Grace
That’s good, running counts. Favorite book?
Jaime Leverton
Oh, I know the Bitcoin Standards.
Maddy Grace
I’ll write that down, cat or dog?
Jaime Leverton
Dog.
Maddy Grace
Value investor or day trader?
Jaime Leverton
Value investor.
Maddy Grace
Fancy or casual?
Jaime Leverton
Definitely casual, especially in a pandemic.
Maddy Grace
If you had a thousand dollars to invest, what company would it be if not your own?
Jaime Leverton
Bitcoin
Maddy Grace
Bitcoin.
Maddy Grace
What was the last movie you watched?
Jaime Leverton
Ohhhh, Penguin Bloom, I watched with the kids and my husband this weekend, it was great.
Maddy Grace
And last but not least, where does Bitcoin close at the end of the year?
Jaime Leverton
Oh, that’s a really tough question, Elon surprised us all this morning and so Bitcoin that at new all time highs today and I think we’re still in the first inning of institutions moving into Bitcoin in a significant way. So I’m very bullish. I don’t want to put a number on it, but I’ll say JP Morgan’s number was 146. And I think I’m probably even more aggressive than that.
Maddy Grace
Nice. OK, well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me and hopefully we get to talk to you again in the future.
Jaime Leverton
Absolutely. Any time. It was great to be here. Thanks, Maddy.
Maddy Grace
Thank you so much.