Crypto Lenders Morph Into Miners as Repossessed Rigs Pile Up
- Lenders get creative as miners default on machine-backed loans
- NYDIG among firms to keep Bitcoin rigs running, set up income
An engineer runs diagnostics on rigs mining at a crypto farm.
Photographer: Akos Stiller/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Crypto lenders have repossessed so many Bitcoin mining rigs they’re resorting to plugging them in and extracting tokens themselves.
Lenders are getting creative as to what to do with the mining machines they accepted as collateral for the some $4 billion in rig-backed loans they underwrote when the rally in Bitcoin seemed unstoppable. With the recent surge in loan defaults and plunge in cryptocurrencies, the value of new generation machines has dropped 85%, according to data from Luxor Technologies.