Dmg Blockchain Solutions Inc

XTSX:DMGI

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good afternoon, and welcome to the DMG Solutions Fiscal Q1 2024 Update Conference Call. Participants on this call are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live over the Internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. The webcast replay of the call will be available on the company's website. Joining us today from DMG Blockchain Solutions is Sheldon Bennett, the company's CEO, Chief Executive Officer; and Steven Eliscu, Chief Operating Officer.

During this call, management will be making forward-looking statements, including statements that address DMG Blockchain Solutions, expectations for future performance and operating results. Forward-looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in DMG Blockchain Solutions' most recently filed periodic reports and the company's press release -- releases, particularly the cautionary statements with it. The content of this call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, February 22, 2024. Except as required by law, DMG Blockchain Solutions disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call.

It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Sheldon and Steven. Sheldon?

[Sheldon Bennett, executive]

Thank you, [ Louis ]. Good afternoon, and thanks to everyone who has joined the call today. My name is Sheldon Bennett, and I'm the CEO and Founder of DMG Blockchain Solutions. With a similar format as recent quarters, first, I'll provide an overview of the company's achievements in the past quarter and financial year. I will then pass to Steven who will review the company's performance. We will end the call with a Q&A based on questions submitted to us prior to the call.

So now to our highlights of recent achievements. Regarding our Core+ strategy, focused in on software. This morning, we announced Systemic Trust. We are committed to -- committing significant resources to build a qualified digital asset custodian business. Key to our custody solution is that it is using our Petra technology, i.e., our custodial wallet clients will be able to send transactions to Terra Pool to ensure they are set using carbon-neutral energy and not co-mingling with bad actors. We initially thought it would be straightforward to get third-party custodians to direct transactions to Terra Pool.

This proved to be optimistic without having an established customer base that was already choosing to send their transactions this way and without the wallet technology being Petra-enabled. As the pioneer in this respect, we found the only way we can make this happen was to bring in new talent, namely Lawrence Truong and his team. With his vision, experience and industry connections he has been able to bring together what is necessary to execute the solution. We are excited about the potential for the Systemic Trust business and how it can become a catalyst for the rest of DMG's Core+ strategy.

Our investment into Bosonic. As we have recently disclosed, we have invested an additional USD 600,000 into Bosonic to continue supporting its development and help them enable its sustained cash flow positive operations. We are encouraged with Bosonic's progress and may also be able to leverage our relationship with Bosonic to accelerate Systemic Trust development. We are actively working to enable Petra to work beyond DMG's infrastructure and make it more widely available to others. While the initial focus is to enable Systemic, we are seeking to more broadly make Petra available to other custodians.

As an update on ordinals, we continue to work with third parties to offer the option of carbon-neutral ordinal inscription via Terra Pool. We have also performed our first inscriptions related to BRC-20. Finally, we are investigating how we best utilize the upcoming Runes standard which goes live post halvening in April.

Regarding our core business of Bitcoin Mining, in the December quarter, we had a realized hash rate of 0.96 exahash, up 45% sequentially with a fleet efficiency of 28.4 joules per terahash as measured from our substation. And we mined 196 Bitcoin, up 35% sequentially. As the network produced about 208 Bitcoin per exahash in the quarter, down 6% sequentially, our Bitcoin production was in line with expectations based on our realized hash rate. Additionally, in the quarter -- current quarter, our hash rate should be up slightly, and we are making further improvements to reach our target hash rate of 1.2x hash. We are well down the road of halvening -- having all the infrastructure in place to deploy the June quarter, our USD 1.2 million purchase of 4,550 Bitmain T21 miners.

Combined with our current fleet, which we expect to rationalize with the coming halvening in April, we expect to have increased hash rate with the fleet efficiency below 25 joules per terahash. To pay for those miners, as we recently disclosed, we entered into a credit facility with Sygnum Bank based in Switzerland and have drawn USD 5.6 million mainly towards payment of the miners. Given that we previously paid USD 1.2 million, we have now paid for 55% of the total and intend to utilize cash and our debt to pay the balance. Our emerging -- immersion cooling deployment is proceeding with our first production environment tanks on order. We expect to have this initial close through setup completed in the June quarter, subsequent to this initial build-out, we will purchase the remainder of the equipment necessary to energize the first 12-megawatt base.

In addition, we have selected deployment partner that is located near Christina Lake Facility and with which we have had a long-standing relationship. At this time, we intend to operate legacy miners in immersion to help us thoroughly prove out the technology. The subsequent build-out of the remaining 24 megawatts and our Christina Lake building will largely be gated by our ability to obtain additional capital to buy new immersion ready miners to facilitate that capacity. In addition, we are waiting to see new immersion cable miners from a number of vendors some of whom are new names in the mining rig market. New generation minus with sub-20 joule per terahash efficiency over 24 megawatts would enable us to generate at least an additional 1.2 exahash.

Of course, a portion of our legacy fleet, which would be utilizing that 24 megawatts of existing air cooled miners would need to find a new home if we decide to keep them in operation. But even without them, the combination of -- part of our existing fleet, the new T21 fleet and 24 megawatts of an immersion cable mining capacity gives us a path to 3 exahash.

Regarding our prior announcement that we have entered into a nonbinding agreement that would result in the development of a new data center site with access to low-cost reliable renewable energy located in Canada in a province outside of British Columbia, we can share some updates. There has been significant progress regarding regulatory approvals for power, so that we hope we can share greater details in the very near future. In addition, we are proceeding with our capital outlay plan for this new site and are working towards executing a binding agreement.

Now for a summary of our strategy: first, Core+. We feel that with Systemic Trust, DMG is taking its Core+ strategy to a whole new level. We have brought in Lawrence, who in turn has brought in a first rate team that provides huge name for financial institutions to have the option for our transaction Bitcoin in a carbon-neutral manner. Combined with our partnership with Bosonic to provide exchange infrastructure that provides the liquidity that can help Systemic to more rapidly scale. Along with our Blockseer Explorer and Walletscore, we have a set of applications on top of our Terra Pool, Helm Mine Manager management system, Petra and Freeze hot wallets, all of which work together to enable DMG to monetize Bitcoin transactions.

Now regarding DMG's core mining strategy, and we have made significant progress to expand our hash rate with the deployment of containerized mining at a facility including the addition of approximately 1 exahash as of new T21 miners that we intend to deploy in the June quarter as well as our upcoming production test on immersion cooling capacity, we encourage that we can keep up the momentum, which, in large part, will depend on our access to capital that avoids the massive shareholder dilution we have seen among our peers. We have demonstrated our ability to smartly utilize debt, and we may utilize additional debt, liquidity at Bitcoin or rates, equity capital for future expansion. However, we will do so only as long as we can justify that we can earn more than our cost of capital.

Now I'll hand over to Steven to review the company's performance.

[Steven Eliscu, executive]

Thank you, Sheldon. I'm Steven Eliscu, DMG's COO. Now a few words about the company's overall position. In the December quarter, our cash and Bitcoin balance of $27.7 million increased 46% sequentially and was up 153% year-on-year. This balance is supporting our ability to make capital equipment purchases, including new mining equipment, immersion cooling infrastructure and power distribution infrastructure. We are also utilizing some of this balance as collateral for the Sygnum Bank credit facility. So we don't need to liquidate additional bitcoin at this time to pay for at least a portion of the new T21 fleet.

As a miner, our focus to double our hash rate ahead of the halvening will mitigate the halvening of the block subsidy. This is especially important as we cannot count on transaction fees staying at the elevated levels of the December quarter. Additionally, to mitigate the increased power costs given that we'll be operating a much larger fleet, we are targeting to improve our fleet efficiency to be below 25 joules terahash when we have our T21 fleet fully deployed. We plan on utilizing low-power operation of our legacy fleet that will support being able to achieve this goal as low power operation results also in a reduction in hash rate albeit a greater efficiency, investors should assume that the hash rate for our legacy fleet should drop in the range of 100 to 200 terahash post halvening.

We expect other miners to implement these changes as well, and thus, we would expect at least a pause in the overall network hash rate growth post halvening. However, as our internal estimates for network hash rate growth over the past year have been vastly exceeded, we caution against making predictions. As 3/4 of the Bitcoin network is composed of miners, which are not publicly listed, it's difficult to extrapolate how much of the network growth we should expect in the coming -- how much network growth we should expect in the coming months.

In the December quarter, our revenue increased 72% to $9.7 million, up from $5.6 million in the prior quarter mainly as revenue from self-mining increased 80% to $9.8 million as the company's bitcoin production increased 35% to 196 bitcoin at a 33% higher realized price. In line with the guidance that our realized hash rate would increase nearly 50% in the December quarter. Our hash rate was 0.96 exahash, up 45% from the prior quarter with Bitcoin production offset by a 6% decline in the network BTCs per exahash. On a year-on-year basis, revenue increased 35% from $7.2 million as revenue from self-mining increased 47%.

Investors should note that with the combination of a big jump in the hash rate in the March quarter, combined with a big drop in transaction fees, network bitcoin production per exahash could drop in the range of 20%. Investors should be prepared for this drop when they update their models. This applies to all bitcoin miners, our hosting revenue increased to $0.37 million in our December quarter, up from $0.21 million the prior quarter. While hosting revenue increased as our overall mine operations improved, we do not expect further material increases in hosting revenue going forward.

It is possible that hosting revenue could significantly decline this year as we are currently not focused on bringing in new hosting clients and our current clients may reduce their fleet. Net pool revenue was minus $1 million in the December quarter versus 0 in the prior quarter. As we discussed in our financial disclosures, we expect net pool revenue results to be either positive or negative depending on the quarter with the resulting fluctuations to some to 0 over time. While it was negative in the last 3 or 4 quarters, we examined the data of blocks mined from July through December, a time period for which we also have block win data on pools that we mined other than Terra Pool, the number of mine blocks was exactly in line with what we would have expected. However, as the variability of block wins in a given period can vary by quite a lot. We're being very careful as to how we test and ultimately deploy a Terra Pool for the larger Bitcoin mining community.

Regarding software license revenue, as reported in our financial statements, approximately CAD 1 million in cash was received from Marathon Digital with regards to termination of a license agreement. This resulted in 562,000 of nonrecurring revenue. Our margin percentage on our revenue less operating and maintenance costs was 47% in December quarter, up from 36% in the prior quarter and was the highest level since the September quarter of 2022.

Our fleet efficiency also improved to 28.4 joules per terahash, its best ever from 29 in the prior quarter as we have our full fleet running much more optimally than during the warm summer months. Accordingly, our electricity cost to mine a bitcoin, which is up modestly from the prior quarter to about USD 17,000. Given our guidance for a decline in Bitcoin production for exahash in the current quarter, investors should expect a corresponding increase in our cost to mine a bitcoin.

In the current quarter, we expect incremental hash rate increases as well as fleet efficiency improvements. As a proxy for cash flow from our business, which assumes we're selling about 100% of our generated bitcoin, our earnings before other items, excluding depreciation and amortization and stock-based comp, was $3.2 million or 33% on a percentage basis in the December quarter, up from $0.1 million in the prior quarter.

This was in line with expectations for a rebound. The result is also similar to the $3.7 million of December quarter cash flow from operations. Non-mine expenses, excluding depreciation, amortization and stock-based comp, were $1.3 million in the December quarter, down from the prior quarter of $1.9 million. Even as expenses dropped to more historical levels, investors should still assume that expenses will be somewhat more elevated in the current year as we are making more substantial investments in our Core+ strategy.

Depreciation expense of $4.3 million in the December quarter decreased 6% from the prior quarter, as we have announced a $12 million -- USD 12.1 million purchase of Bitmain T21 miners, we would expect depreciation to reverse its downward trend when we place those miners into service. Our earnings before other items was minus $1.5 million in the December quarter versus minus $4.9 million in the prior quarter. Below the operating income line, we showed $8.2 million of unrealized gains on digital currency, resulting in a $7 million of net income and $0.04 earnings per share versus minus $2.8 million net income in the prior quarter. This is the first time since the March quarter of 2022, the company has posted positive net income.

Regarding further capital raising, we are still being very cautious regarding overall spending, especially going into the halvening. But we also know that we have significant expenses for the second half of 2024 and beyond as we position the company for future growth. This includes more CapEx to build out infrastructure for our new mining site outside of British Columbia as well as CapEx for immersion, including the future purchase of at least 24 megawatts of immersion-ready miners plus an expected step-up in non-mine expenses to grow our Core+ business.

Our cash for digital currency holdings increased 46% to 27.7% versus $18.9 million in the prior quarter as the value of our bitcoin held increased 53%. The value of our property and equipment and long-term deposits decreased to $49.1 million from $50.7 million in the prior quarter as our depreciation exceeded the amount of new equipment either prepaid or deployed. Accordingly, our asset base increased 10% to $91 million from $82.6 million in the prior quarter. On a year-over-year basis, our total assets decreased by 1% from $92.1 million.

In the December quarter, DMG sold nearly 191 bitcoin, generating $9.4 million of cash. We sold -- thus, we sold 97% of the amount -- of the Bitcoin amount mine versus the prior quarter of selling 128% of the Bitcoin mined. As a treasury policy, investors should continue to expect us to sell most or all of the bitcoin we mine. Investors should not expect DMG to be a major hodler in the future, especially as investors now have access to a plethora of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs that allow for direct exposure to bitcoin.

I will now hand the call back to Sheldon to summarize our prepared comments, and we will answer questions submitted to us prior to the call.

[Sheldon Bennett, executive]

Thanks, Steven. To reiterate our key results and our outlook. In summary, we are positioning the company for more increased growth but are cautious ahead of the halvening. DMG mined 196 bitcoin in Q1, up 35% from the prior quarter on a hash rate of 0.96 exahash, up 45% from the prior quarter. Cash and digital currency at quarter end was $27.7 million with total assets of $91 million. On a net income basis, we were profitable for the first time since March quarter of 2022. We expect to deploy our next-generation T21 miners that can generate up to an additional exahash of nameplate capacity in the June quarter. This positions us to grow to 2 exahash and beyond. We're stepping up our investment to enable our Core+ software strategy with Systemic Trust as a key enabler that will provide financial institutions, the option to said bitcoin in a carbon-neutral manner. As we have consistently stated, we are committed to our Core+ strategy and building the necessary structure that will enable us to execute this strategy.

While we are encouraged by recent industry trends, investors should understand that even as bitcoin pricing has returned to levels of 3 years ago, revenue per kilowatt, the easiest metric to understand margins, it's now half of what it was then. The environment is clearly more challenging, but we are ready for the challenge. While we continue to grow our hash rate, we are now more than doubling down on our Core+, including Systemic Trust. Our Bosonic investment, Blockseer Explorer, along with Terra Pool and Helm as well as utilizing Petra as a key enabler to tie all of this together.

[Sheldon Bennett, executive]

So now on to our Q&A. We have a number of questions that have been submitted before this call. And as per previous calls, Steven and I will answer these questions as best we can. Normally, I take a few and Steven takes a few. I'll start with a couple of questions.

First question, which we were not expecting, but I guess people quickly saw the announcement. First question is, why will Systemic be successful when Coinbase has garnered most of the business for the new U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs?

So to answer this, I think it's important to understand that Systemic Trust, it's really right now exclusively focused on Canada. Currently, there's only 1 qualified custodian in Canada, and the bar is high to enter this business due to the capital requirements which makes it right for new entrants like DMG's investment into starting Systemic Trust. However, as people with industry knowledge are required to create a qualified digital asset they're hard to find and we're really fortunate that we did find Lawrence, who was a previous key executive at another qualified custodian and he's been able to bring together a very strong team in a very short period of time.

Lawrence's understanding of how to execute, both on technology and regulatory compliance is key to our go-to-market strategy. And of course, we will leverage technology partnerships [indiscernible] of outstanding relationships that we have with regulators and Lawrence has with the regulators to make this happen. Long term, there's a whole world coming of tokenized digital assets that we will want to be involved in as a digital custody to allow them to be traded and held.

We see Systemic and Bosonic and other investment we have as key in what's coming and continuing to come in the world of digital assets. So we believe the market is vast, Coinbase is taking one part of that market, but it's a huge market in Canada, and there's a huge market in general outside of the ETFs. I don't know if Steven has a comment, but that's my general answer to that one.

The other question we have, what is the anticipated time line for installation of the new T21 miners? As we discussed earlier in the presentation, our time line is to have them all deployed in the June quarter.

Another question, where exactly will they be installed and are all the needed connections currently in place? They will go to Christina Lake, our main facility in British Columbia and all the infrastructure is bought. And currently, the integration is underway. And what I mean by that is the transformers and cabling and containers and all of these things are there, and we have a contractor working with our team doing the installation as we speak.

How do you look at the growth of the Bitcoin network hash rate and where do you believe it will be once new miners are installed? As discussed in our prepared comments, we have not been particularly good at forecasting the network hash rate. But we do expect some type of pause post halvening as we believe many miners will utilize the higher efficiency rate, so higher efficiency less hashing on their miners as we plan to do, which will create an overall reduction in hash rate. Next question, I think I answered that one correctly. We think there'll be a pause in network hash rate growth with people putting them in high efficiency mode. Do you still believe your fleet efficiency will improve to 25 joules of terahash after installing them? Yes, we do believe that. We've done the math behind the new miners coming in, in the current miners we have and our ability to run them in a more efficient mode and we will give some more information and clarity on that on our next earnings call once we're further down the road of doing that.

[Steven Eliscu, executive]

Yes. Just to add on to that, Sheldon. We're currently planning to run our T21 miners and what's called high energy mode, which is actually less efficient, but it gets more hash rate. And because these are such efficient miners to begin with, testing may prove that even as the data that we have from Bitmain that it should run reliably, that we may have to back off on utilizing that high-energy mode. And indeed, we may even get -- if we have to back off, that means we run them in their standard mode, which is more efficient. It's 19 joules a terahash. So the combination of running the existing miners in higher efficiency mode and the new miners at somewhere between 19 and 22 joules terahash, we feel quite confident we'll get below 25. And we think for the industry, this is going to be the bogey that all miners are going to have to be below.

[Sheldon Bennett, executive]

Thank you, Steven. Next question. Can you discuss more about Bosonic and the due diligence you perform to be confident in letting them additional money? That's a good question. We've been in much closer contact with Bosonic. Obviously, we're an investor there. It's not a company that we own or operate. But we've been a much closer contact with them prior to executing an agreement where we lend them some more money. In doing that -- before we do these agreements, we spent a lot of time on due diligence including weekly cash flow and deal flow discussions, I understand where the cash is coming, where it's going, where they see new cash coming in, understanding their cost of operations, future cost of operations. And we're quite encouraged with where they're going, what they want to do with us, how Systemic Trust can fit in to be beneficial for all of us; DMG, Systemic Trust and Bosonic. So we're quite encouraged by their progress. And we believe that the due diligence we did was quite there and well warranted for this additional loan we've made.

[Steven Eliscu, executive]

And what I would also add to that is the whole premise for the original investment in Bosonic was based on a technology that solved a real problem for the industry, and it still does. That premise still holds and having our own custodial solution, just because we've already been working with Bosonic, we've proved out the technology. We're really excited about the potential for synergies between those 2 companies, Systemic Trust and Bosonic.

[Sheldon Bennett, executive]

Thanks, Steven. Next question, how are you balancing capital allocation between minor deployment and hiring for Core+? That's a great question. We kind of view this in 2 different buckets. With miners, we evaluate based on our expected payback over 12 to 18 months, whereas in Core+ with hiring for software, we based on what investments we need to achieve certain goals so that we can maximize our return on those software projects. So they kind of apples and oranges when we look at how we balance that capital, not that's the best way to answer it, but it's sort of how we look at.

[Steven Eliscu, executive]

I mean, at least up until now, our core mining business has demanded the vast majority of our capital. But as we are now having to invest a substantial amount to -- that's required for Systemic Trust. We are going to have to look more closely at one versus the other. And -- but that's really a go-forward exercise, and we'll update you as we look forward, we may say, well, we're putting more capital into Systemic Trust and not as much in our mining operation or vice versa. So I think we're going to evaluate it as we go forward and there will be -- given that there's always limited capital, there will be -- this will become more of an either or in the future, most likely.

[Sheldon Bennett, executive]

Yes, I think it's just important for people to understand that even though the price per terahash [indiscernible] has come down significantly since the last bolt-on, it's still -- when you look at the exahash, the difficulty is still very expensive from a capital point of view to build cryptomining. Building software is expensive, but the returns are different. The cost structure is different. And so we're trying to look at where can we get the best ROI, what is the best use of our capital to try and meet a great return, whether it's on our Core business or our Core+ business.

How do you plan -- another question, how do you plan on raising additional funds that needed? We discussed this in our comments at the beginning of the meeting. Right now, we can use a combination of our liquid assets and cash flow generated as well as raising new debt or potentially equity. Right now, as we've said, we're focused in on new -- on debt, potentially using some of our coins as we've been selling close to or up to 100% of the coins as we're reducing.

What has changed since adding Lawrence Truong as a strategic adviser? So our goal from the outset last year was to build a qualified facility business. As we recognized this needed to enable our Core+ business in order for Core+ to really reach its full potential. So we hired Lawrence to do exactly that. And so far, from when we announced him joining us as an advisor to now, we're quite encouraged by the progress to date as we have put a lot of detail in today's press release, he's achieved a lot in a very small period of time, and we hope to continue to give more information on -- now Lawrence as a strategic adviser, but now Lawrence as the CEO of a new company that DMG owns that he is leading with its own Board of Directors.

Some more questions here. Steve, maybe you want to do a couple of these?

[Steven Eliscu, executive]

Sure. And there were a couple in the chat, just asking for guidance for next quarter. I think we indicated some tailwinds in terms of hash rate/efficiency, but there are some headwinds in terms of the network, producing less bitcoin per exahash. So you can utilize those assumptions in your models.

And then how do you see the company over the next 5 years? We're really proud of being recognized by the TSX Venture Exchange being a top 50 company. This year, we're #2 within the technology category. And this is out of the last 3 years, we've won twice. So this, at least -- I mean, this is, of course, backward looking, how do we -- we hope that we can translate this track record going forward more substantially really realizing this vision that Sheldon put together several years ago. All of this is very hard. We've said the environment is challenging, but we're up to the challenge, and we're really excited long term what value that the Core+ strategy can generate.

Also the question on the recent decline in transaction fees to more historical levels. Is this going to become status quo, especially post halvening? So we've seen a lot of ups and downs with transaction fees over the many years. For Sheldon and I, we've been through the 2016 and 2020 halvening. So we've kind of seen all these cycles and transaction fees as well. We truly think these new use cases including ordinals. We haven't talked a lot about ordinals lately, but this is something we continue to put effort in working with third parties and really enabling inscriptions in a more automated way.

That's our goal and to be able to be able to monetize the fact that they're using carbon-neutral energy versus inscriptions that are not being done that way. Looking at rooms, we've been working more closely with the folks who are putting these standards together, really trying to stay on top of this. And we think all of these will help support higher fees over time. And we also just think if the economics of bitcoin mining aren't as buoyant as people may have gotten used to in December quarter because of high transaction fees. This move to utilizing low power mode and decommissioning miners will be more aggressive in the industry as a result because ultimately, people need to make money. They need to generate cash to pay at least their operational expenses and at least to be able to invest in new equipment to be a player in the long term.

Another question about M&A opportunities this year. I mean we talked about -- Sheldon and I we're talking about this every day with the inquiries that come in as well as just with our Board on a fairly continual basis. And it's always about organic versus inorganic growth and really looking at -- and being able to raise capital to accelerate all of this growth. We have just looked at its best to buy a state-of-the-art miner and leverage the fact we have the ability to add capacity within our Christina Lake facility, the fact that we were working on a new facility, and we continue to work towards develop new science. The cost to be able to do that is almost without exception less than combining with another miner.

We talked about our equipment cost of being $14 a terahash. If we can successfully run our miners in this high-energy mode, the effective capital costs will be more like $11.5 a terahash. That is really hard to beat when another company wants to be acquired. And that, of course, the minor cost is the majority of the total cost to deploy new miners. And of course, you can always leverage hosting partners to be able to deploy new mining assets. So I think, at least with respect to our core strategy, we will continue to be organic. And I think with respect to our core plus strategy, partnerships, the investment in Bosonic, but really it's about the partnership with Bosonic, not just a passive investment. And the partnerships that Systemic Trust is also developing are very much going to benefit us. And for shareholders, that's a much more cost-effective way, much less dilutive way to be able to drive growth.

Question on -- update on Prime Trust. The wind-down process is proceeding. And also, some of you may have seen in the news that FTX investors are being made whole. Well, that's based on the time of the bankruptcy and the fact that cryptocurrency prices were depressed. That essentially set the value for them to get return. They did not necessarily get a return 1 for 1 in cryptocurrency. They got paid based in Fiat. The 49 bitcoin that we have on our balance sheet, we still expect to get that back as bitcoin. So if with the appreciation of Bitcoin since the Prime Trust balance bankruptcy, we would not be penalized with respect to that in terms of having lost that value.

And then just asking for guidance on operating and maintenance expenses. This is really just mainly a function of our utility costs. And this is why we give guidance on hash rate and efficiency because you multiply hash rate times efficiency and you get an estimate on the number of megawatts, and you could see from what we're saying in terms of cost to mine a bitcoin, you can kind of get an idea as well as looking at our utility costs and our bitcoin mined more or less where we're at in terms of that cost.

So with that, I'll -- that concludes our Q&A, and I'll hand it back to Sheldon.

[Sheldon Bennett, executive]

Thanks, Steven. I didn't add anything to your questions you answered, but I think you answered all those points. We don't have any other submitted questions. So I don't see any coming up on the chat. So with no more questions, we thank everyone for attending and our call is now over. Thank you.

[Steven Eliscu, executive]

Thank you, everybody.