Company: CIFRW
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001819989-25-000005
Chunk: 2

Company: Cipher Mining Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7
Chunk 2
---
 new block on a given blockchain and (ii) transaction fees in bitcoin, which are flexible fees earned for verifying transactions in support of the blockchain. For further details, see “Business—Revenue Structure.” 

Our revenues are directly impacted by changes in the market value of bitcoin. For example, the market price of one bitcoin in our principal market ranged from approximately $38,501 to $108,389 during the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024 and $16,490 to $45,000 during the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023. Furthermore, block rewards are fixed and the Bitcoin network is designed to periodically reduce them through halving. Currently the block rewards are fixed at 3.125 bitcoin per block after the latest halving in April 2024. The halving events happen without any regard to ongoing demand, meaning that if the ongoing demand remains the same after a halving event, whatever demand was being met by new supply will be restricted, which may necessitate an adjustment of the price of bitcoin, though there is no definitive evidence of a causal link between bitcoin’s programmatic decrease in supply and broadening demand.

Bitcoin miners also collect transaction fees for each transaction they confirm. Miners validate unconfirmed transactions by adding the previously unconfirmed transactions to new blocks in the blockchain. Miners are not forced to confirm any specific transaction, but they are economically incentivized to confirm valid transactions as a means of collecting fees. Miners have historically accepted relatively low transaction confirmation fees, but transaction fees vary and it is difficult to predict what transaction fees will be in the future.

As the use of the Bitcoin network expands and the total number of bitcoin available to mine and, thus, the block rewards, declines over time, we expect the mining incentive structure to transition to a higher reliance on transaction confirmation fees, and the transaction fees to become a larger proportion of the revenues to miners. 

We have expenses denominated primarily in United States dollars. As such, we are likely to need to sell a portion of the bitcoin we mine to generate dollars to meet expenses. This means the market value of bitcoin will always be a significant factor affecting our results of operations.

Capacity and Efficiency of Mining Machines.

Because the number of bitcoin mined is directly related to the size and efficiency of a bitcoin mining company’s fleet of miners, we believe we need to deploy increasingly sophisticated miners in ever greater quantities to remain competitive as the overall hashrate and difficulty of the Bitcoin network increases.

We believe that our commitment to cost and mining efficiency remains