Bit Digital (BTBT) Turns Its Ethereum Stash Into a Lending Machine

On August 13, Bit Digital (NASDAQ:BTBT) reported second-quarter revenue of $32.1 million, up 15% from the prior quarter, while narrowing its net loss to $107.2 million from $146.7 million. But the more interesting move buried in the release wasn't a growth number. It was how the company chose to fund WhiteFiber's newest data center: by borrowing against its own Ethereum holdings rather than selling a single coin or issuing new shares.

The Contracts Keep Piling Up

Bit Digital's infrastructure businesses are doing the heavy lifting. Cloud services revenue jumped 42% from the first quarter to $23.8 million, and colocation revenue for the first half of the year climbed 182% from a year earlier, even before the company's NC-1 data center campus starts contributing revenue in the third quarter.

Contract liabilities, essentially cash customers have already committed, but the company hasn't yet recognized as revenue, more than doubled to $143.1 million from $79.6 million at the end of last year, and the backlog behind that number runs to roughly $1.0 billion. Since its last earnings call, WhiteFiber (NASDAQ:WYFI), which is the AI infrastructure and HPC subsidiary of Bit Digital, has signed new multi-year cloud services agreements worth more than $540 million in aggregate contract value, a pipeline management says could generate over $200 million in annualized revenue once fully deployed.