Company: CIFRW
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001819989-25-000005
Chunk: 140

Company: Cipher Mining Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 140
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 could cause us to become subject to additional regulatory scrutiny and a number of additional requirements, including licensing and permit requirements. Any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our business, prospects, financial condition, and operating results.

If we fail to grow our hashrate, we may be unable to compete, and our results of operations could suffer.

Generally, a bitcoin miner’s chance of solving a block on the bitcoin blockchain and earning a bitcoin reward is a function of the miner’s hashrate (i.e., the amount of computing power devoted to supporting the Bitcoin blockchain), relative to the global network hashrate. As demand for bitcoin has increased, the global network hashrate has increased, and to the extent more adoption of bitcoin occurs, we would expect the demand for bitcoin would increase, drawing more mining companies into the industry and further increasing the global network hashrate. As new and more powerful miners are deployed, the global network hashrate will continue to increase, meaning a miner’s percentage of the total daily rewards will decline unless it deploys additional hashrate at pace with the growth of global hashrate. Accordingly, to compete in this highly competitive industry, we believe we will need to continue to acquire new miners, both to replace those lost to ordinary wear-and-tear and other damage, and to increase our hashrate to keep up with a growing global network hashrate.

Furthermore, predicting the growth in network hashrate is extremely difficult. To the extent that hashrate increases but the price of bitcoin does not, the results of our bitcoin mining operations would suffer.

The further development and acceptance of digital asset networks and other digital assets, which represent a new and rapidly changing industry, are subject to a variety of factors that are difficult to evaluate. The slowing or stopping of the development or acceptance of digital asset systems may adversely affect an investment in us.

The use of cryptocurrencies to, among other things, buy and sell goods and services and complete transactions, is part of a new and rapidly evolving industry that employs cryptocurrency assets, including bitcoin, based upon a computer-generated mathematical or cryptographic protocol. Large-scale acceptance of bitcoin as a means of payment has not, and may never, occur. The growth of this industry in general, and the use of bitcoin in particular, is subject to a high degree of uncertainty, and the slowing or stopping of the development or acceptance of developing protocols may occur unpredictably. These factors include, but are not limited to: 

•worldwide growth in the adoption and use