Blockware's Danny Condon on Rigs as Assets

Danny Condon, chief revenue officer at Blockware, wants miners to stop calling their rigs a sunk cost. He made the case at Mining Disrupt Miami 2024, held June 24 to 26, 2024. Bitcoin traded at $61,272 that week. On October 16, 2026, it was $82,531.

Condon's starting point is that mining is capital intensive. Operators pay for infrastructure and for ASICs before they mine a single coin. The usual view treats the rig as a sunk cost: money goes in, the machine mines, and in time the profits add up to more than the purchase. Condon asked the room to see it differently. In his words, "think about Bitcoin mining rigs, not as a sunk cost, but instead as dividend paying assets." The Bitcoin mined is the dividend. The ASIC is the asset, with a spot value that follows the Bitcoin price and hashprice.

He listed the problems buyers and operators share. Lead times, because rigs come off production lines in Asia and travel by plane, boat and truck before they run. Uneven machines, because, as he said, "Not every S21 is going to hash at the same efficiency as the next S21." And no easy way to resell, so capital stays locked in the hardware.

His answer was the Blockware Marketplace, which lists rigs that are already plugged in at Blockware-owned or partner data centers. A buyer sees the serial number, how the rig is performing and when it was plugged in, pays by Lightning invoice or on-chain, and is mining.

Then the numbers, from Blockware's own clients. One buyer bought 76 S19K Pros for about $120,000 and spent about $40,000 on operating costs and energy over roughly four months. Mining alone returned 62 percent of that capital. The client then sold the rigs for more than they paid, after about four and a half months of mining, and the return came to 156 percent over the same period.

A second case: an operating partner that deployed one megawatt of S21s, about $1.2 million in capital and operating costs, on machines pre-ordered from Bitmain at a low cost basis. Selling the rigs for significantly more than it paid, and locking in a hosting contract, Condon said, pulled its return forward by years.

For operators, he argued, that means income beyond hashprice: selling rigs, hosting revenue on the machines they sell, and a profit share each time those rigs trade again.

The full story is on Mining Disrupt at miningdisrupt dot com, and many more like it play around the clock on Bitcoin Radio.