Crypto mining company BIT Mining said its move to mine proof-of-work coins Dogecoin and Litecoin has been more profitable than mining only Bitcoin.
BIT Mining, which previously only mined Bitcoin (BTC), said on Dec. 4 that its expansion into Dogecoin (DOGE) and Litecoin (LTC) “has proved to be nearly three times more profitable than mining BTC alone.”
The company said up until Nov. 27, it had mined 227,908,250.38 DOGE, worth $94.8 million and 84,485.42 LTC, worth $10.7 million. It didn’t say how much of the mined DOGE and LTC it had held onto, as both cryptocurrencies have surged over the past month.
BIT Mining reported holding 22.6 BTC at the end of 2023, currently worth $2.2 million.
Source: BIT Mining
It did note that it benefited from DOGE’s price increase, partly fueled by Donald Trump’s United States election win and Elon Musk’s promise to make a Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an advisory agency to Trump on government cost-cutting.
“Elon Musk’s influence and the changing regulatory landscape in the US after the Trump win has had a major impact on mining profitability,” said BIT Mining’s vice president and chief economist, Youwei Yang.
BIT Mining rallied 10% on the New York Stock Exchange to close Dec. 4 at $3.26, while most other Bitcoin miners rose between 3% and 7%, Google Finance data shows.
BTCM’s share price on Dec. 4, including a 2.15% increase in after-hours trading. Source: Google Finance
BIT Mining’s shares are down 37% year to date, continuing a decline in the stock price since 2014.
The firm started its DOGE and LTC mining operations in May 2023 — two-and-a-half years after it changed its name from 500.com and started mining Bitcoin, moving away from being an online sports lottery.
BIT Mining now has over 5,550 active machines that can mine DOGE, LTC and Bellscoin (BEL), representing 1.32% of the total network hashrate.
Diversifying from Bitcoin isn’t a foreign idea in the mining industry
Bitcoin mining heavyweight MARA Holdings revealed it started mining Kaspa (KAS) tokens last September, mining $16 million worth by June.
Rival miners CleanSpark and TeraWulf told Cointelegraph that they intend to continue mining only Bitcoin in the foreseeable future.
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“We are not planning any diversification into other proof-of-work coins,” said CleanSpark senior vice president Harry Sudock, who added Bitcoin’s “long track record” means the company is more comfortable with mining it “for the long term.”
BIT Mining’s latest moves come as it recently admitted it authorized paying bribes to Japanese officials in an attempt to win a bid for a resort and casino license in its former life as 500.com, between 2017 and 2019.
The firm agreed to $10 million worth of fines to the US government to resolve the charges on Nov. 18.
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