Cipher Mining Inc. (NASDAQ:CIFR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Joseph Vafi: Sure. Fair enough. Yes, I mean, there is some lead time and things can change. So we’ll keep asking the question, Tyler, to see if there’s any change there for Black Pearl. And then just quickly, I guess, on Alborz, getting your plug-in to the grid to keep it going. Any sense at this point kind of what that power cost might be relative to kind of your overall average? Thanks a lot.

Tyler Page: Yes, I think it probably will end up being slightly higher than the overall average. And here’s why. Again, Alborz draws directly from a colocated wind farm that has basically the cheapest power in our portfolio. And you can see that in the electricity cost per bitcoin at the site that we list. That’s what’s so attractive about that site. Now, recall, that site is a big engineering challenge because if the wind’s not blowing, we’re not mining bitcoin. And we designed the data center targeting about 75% uptime, which is lower than you typically hear for bitcoin mining. But again, with the economics we can have at that site, it makes plenty of sense to only have 75% uptime. So when we have a back feed there, conceivably the rest of the time, we would have access to power.

Now, keep in mind, if the wind’s not blowing, typically in West Texas, if the wind’s not blowing, market prices are higher, because that 40 gigawatts of wind, some portion of it might be offline. So, I’d say we’re still going to optimize and it will bring the uptime up. But of course, our tech stack always operates with a business logic that we only mine when it’s profitable. The revenue from mining has to be higher than the cost of power. So what I’d say is, on average, because we’re going to be drawing power when the wind’s not blowing. The market price there will be at the higher end of our portfolio, but we’re only going to mine when it’s profitable to do so.

Joseph Vafi: Fair enough. Yes, the rigs are in there, right? So it’s just getting more incremental output for the rigs and a profitable output. Thanks a lot, guys.

Tyler Page: Thank you.

Operator: And I’m showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the conference back to Tyler Page for closing remarks.

Tyler Page: Well, thank you once again for everyone dialing in and the great questions for those of you that will be in Odessa next week at our Investor Day, at our tour of the site, we look forward to seeing you and showing it off and trying to give a sense of why we’re so excited about the next generation that we’re going to build it at Black Pearl. Thanks again for your support, and we’ll talk to you soon.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.