Squire Mining Signs LOI with Core Scientific in US$6.37 Million Deal

On Tuesday (June 4), blockchain infrastructure company Squire Mining (CSE:SQR) announced that it has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with Core Scientific.

Squire Mining will pay US$6.37 million in prepayments for Core Scientific to relocate and host 41,166 of its blockchain cloud computing units.

Core Scientific is led by Co-founder Aber Whitcomb, former chief technical officer at Myspace, and CEO Kevin Turner, former chief operating officer at Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).

Through its ASIC operating system, MinderOS, Core Scientific will apply artificial intelligence, analytics and its scalable hosting infrastructure to improve performance for Squire’s cloud computing units.

Squire Mining is focused on creating infrastructure for Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Core. Together, Squire and Core Scientific also plan to introduce supply management solutions for Bitcoin SV.

Bitcoin SV, which stands for “Satoshi Vision,” was created in November 2018 by Craig Wright, the founder of nChain. Wright also claimed that he is the mysterious bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto in May. As of Thursday (June 6), it had the eighth largest market cap in cryptocurrencies, standing at US$3.2 billion.

Bitcoin SV has realized a significant uptick in price since May. Since May 6, Bitcoin SV has risen from US$52.84 to US$190.24, a spike of over 300 percent, according to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin Core is open-sourced software for validating blockchain and bitcoin wallet.

As part of the deal, Core Scientific has agreed to invest US$12 million into its hosting infrastructure capabilities for Squire Mining’s assets.

“Core Scientific’s facilities are advanced and secure. Their focus on optimal performance, dedicated maintenance and internal controls will have a significant impact on Squire’s operations and the longevity of our assets,” Stefan Matthews, chairman of Squire Mining, said in a release.

On May 29, Squire signed an LOI with four companies, Cunning Hams, Tansley Equipment, Woodland Technology Group and Laser Lollipop, to purchase all their outstanding shares.

As a result, Squire will obtain cloud computing assets totaling an estimated 2,985 petahashes, including assets in the US and China. This will bring Squire’s assets to 217,000 mining rigs, representing a total of 3,300 petahashes.

A hash is a part of a calculation needed to verify a bitcoin transaction, and 1 petahash represents 1 quadrillion hashes per second. Hash rate is a measurement of the speed at which a crypto miner can complete operations. The greater the speed, the greater the efficiency or performance of the miner.

According to Tuesday’s press release, Squire financed the deal through share consideration, allowing its US$19 million cash reserves to remain intact.

Shares of Squire Mining closed at C$0.37 on Wednesday (May 29). The company requested that its shares be halted due to pending company news, according to the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada. Shares will remain in a trading halt until further notice.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Dorothy Neufeld, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.