Bitcoin miner The9 to build 100MW facility in Kazakhstan via joint venture

Shanghai-headquartered bitcoin mining firm The9 City is building a 100 megawatts mining facility in Kazakhstan as it migrates overseas after China's crackdown.

The Nasdaq-listed bitcoin miner said in a statement on Wednesday that its fully owned subsidiary NBTC Ltd has signed investment terms with a Kazakhstan mining partner KazDigital. The goal is to establish a joint venture to build the 100 MW crypto mining facility by Q1 2022 in the region.

The development will come in four phases with each one installing 25 MW in capacity quarter by quarter, according to The9. The first phase has been completed by August 1 and The9 said it will ship 1,000 units of its bitcoin mining machines to test the waters. The on-site operation will be managed by the local partner.

The9 is one of the few publicly listed bitcoin mining firms that were materially affected by China's crackdown orders since May this year. Its move to build infrastructure from scratch comes amid a global supply crunch on bitcoin mining hosting capacity now that the market has been flooded with bitcoin ASIC miners that have gone offline.

The9 signed a contract last month to reserve 15 MW in capacity at Russia-based colocation firm BitRiver. But it appears that was far from enough and it's needing more space.

Before China shut down power supplies to local bitcoin mining farms, The9 deployed the majority of its 35,000 old generation bitcoin miners in Sichuan, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia and Gansu, per its annual report filed in the U.S.

In addition, The9 expects its first batch of pre-ordered 24,000 units of Bitmain's AntMiner S19j hardware to arrive starting from November.