Happy 130-days A.H. everyone.

Saul Goodman would be having a field day in mining with all the lawsuits flying around. Following the Lancium v Layer1 legal battle, China had to join the party with Bitmain v Poolin.

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Mining News

Bitmain is Denied $30mm Lawsuit to mining pool Poolin

• Kevin Pan, Chris Zhu and Li Moumou of Poolin have been getting pursued by their former employee, Bitmain in a legal battle. The three used to work for BTC.com, one of Bitmain’s mining pools before leaving to start their own mining pool.
• Bitmain is of the belief that this breached their non-compete and confidentiality clauses and it caused Bitmain significant financial harm. In the court procedure, they took the stance that the mining pool space is zero-sum and every dollar Poolin makes is a lost dollar for them. While Bitmain said that the three had benefited more than $30mm USD from Poolin, Kevin argued that the company has been losing money since establishment and his investment in Nakamoto Smart Company has not made a profit.
• Ultimately the court denied most of Bitmain’s claims and gave the three ex-employees a slap on the wrist and minimal fines (ruling)

Argo Reports Earnings

• Argo, a UK-listed mining firm reported H1 2020 earnings a few days ago. Even with the halving and T17 failures, Argo managed to increase revenue by 280% and almost double their EBITDA. (article)
• Peter points out that EBITDA is a good metric to look at for mining companies. I tend to agree with this because (1) it factors in the efficiency of a company’s equipment, i.e. if they have newer gen-machines (2) it takes into consideration power cost and operating expenses (3) it doesn’t include depreciation which its treatment differs significantly across firms.
• You can divide the value of a company know as Enterprise Value (EV) by their EBITDA to determine the valuation of a company. For example, an EV / EBITDA of 2.0x means that for every $1 in EBITDA generation, the company is valued at $2. This metric allows you to standardize across different size companies.
• Long rant here but using this metric you can compare valuations and see which companies are undervalued. Argo seems to be one of those companies trading at a significant discount to its peers.

Layer1 Drama Continues

• BTCKING555 has been relentlessly pursuing Layer1 for allegedly not raising their stated $50mm round, misrepresenting some employees, and patenting technology not owned by CEO Alex Liegl. So far Layer1 has stayed relatively quiet and it appears like they will try to let this pass.

Kazakhstan’s Government Pushed into Mining

• Kazakhstan’s Government is expanding its crypto mining sector with a $715mm USD investment over the next 3 years. They have already attracted $190mm in private investment. As of now, KZ is apparently 6% of the world’s mining. Iran has also recently been in the news for supporting the mining industry, marking a paradigm shift in the mining industry from private to private-public partnerships.

Mining Educational Content

Firmware is one of the most neglected areas of mining. Historically it has been left for only the technicians in mining facilities to deal with. But with an industry that is rapidly evolving, every piece of the mining stack must be understood and leveraged, so we put together this guide to give a brief overview.

ASIC.to advertised performance change for Bitmain S9's below:

Learn more about the history of firmware and current products here:

Firmware Guide

About Luxor

Luxor is a US-based mining company.

We run mining pools for Bitcoin, Dash, Zcash, Horizen, Decred, Sia and more. We launched a new Equihash Profit Switching Algorithm called Luxor Switch and Catalyst which allows altcoin miners to receive payments for their hashrate in Bitcoin.

We also run mining data website, Hashrate Index.

We can be found on Twitter or Discord.