Iris Energy, a sustainable Australian bitcoin miner, has fallen prey to the cryptocurrency chaos. It defaulted on $US107.8million ($163 million) in debts and now faces the possibility of lenders taking back the equipment it financed.
Prominent Australian investors, such as billionaire investor Alex Waislitz have been involved in the turmoil, which has caused Iris to lose more than 94% of its market value since it was listed on Nasdaq last November at $US28 per share.
Iris stated that the loans were secured on specific assets, which did not generate enough cashflow to pay the debt, rather than the main group.
Iris stated that the facilities were designed to ensure prudent risk management in order to protect the infrastructure and business of the group.
According to the company, it had $US53,000,000 in cash at October 31st, excluding non-recourse loans.
They stated that if they didn’t receive full payment by November 29, they would consider taking steps such as appointing receivers to take control of assets no longer used by Iris.
The company previously stated that it would not provide additional financial support to the loans unless they were restructured. Iris stated that it would provide an update next month.
In 2018, Will and Daniel Roberts from Sydney founded Iris. Since then, Iris attracted many high-profile investors in the area, including Regal Funds and Wilson Asset Management.
Iris is a bitcoin miner. Her main operations include large banks of powerful computers that crunch increasingly complicated maths equations. This process powers millions of transactions on the cryptocurrency network and releases new coins into circulation. Iris earns a portion of the new bitcoin coins and the transaction fees that are paid to miners by users for facilitating transactions.
Iris, however, uses coal as a power source for its operations. Many miners around the world use this energy source to power their operations. Iris, however, powers its sites primarily using renewable energy. It places its data centers in areas where there is abundant renewable energy like Texas and British Columbia.
Colin Kruger , a senior reporter in business for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald is .