Fortitude buys 12.5 MW Nebraska facility for net $4.7 million

Fortitude Mining Holdings, Inc., the Zcash mining subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, completed the acquisition of a 12.5-megawatt facility in Prosser, Nebraska, for a net cash outlay of about $4.7 million, lifting its owned power portfolio above 60 megawatts across seven sites. The purchase was funded with cash on hand and based on a gross price of about $6.25 million before credits, including $9.85 million in hosting deposit credits and $465,500 from the sale of about 1,400 mining machines, and the site includes land, buildings and a 67-kilovolt substation. Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert described financial privacy as "a fundamental right" and cast Zcash as a "large asymmetric bet," arguing that analytics services such as Chainalysis have eroded Bitcoin's anonymity and estimating that as much as 10% of Bitcoin liquidity, or about $128 billion, could shift into privacy-focused cryptocurrencies. Fortitude said power costs at the site are about $0.045 per kilowatt-hour, a level it says could reduce mining costs to about $40 per ZEC, while a planned purchase of 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines for about $31.5 million would raise Zcash mining capacity by 145%. The company is also pursuing an all-stock merger with medical technology company HeartSciences (HSCS), with a preliminary proxy statement under SEC review and a target to close in the second half of 2026 before listing on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE.