Bitcoin mining firm Bitdeer secured $60 million in loans to ramp up its Bitcoin ASIC manufacturing efforts as global mining competition intensifies amid record-breaking network hashrates.

According to its annual report, Bitdeer entered a loan agreement in April with affiliate firm Matrixport, a crypto financial services company founded by Bitdeer’s chairman, Jihan Wu.

The facility offers up to $200 million, backed by Bitdeer’s Sealminer hardware, with a floating interest rate of 9% plus market benchmarks. As of April 21, Bitdeer had drawn $43 million from the credit line.

Source: Bitdeer’s Annual Report

The latest funding adds to a $17 million unsecured loan obtained in January, alongside previous capital raises totaling $572.5 million via convertible notes in 2024. Bitdeer also issued over six million shares, raising nearly $119 million in equity markets this year.

Related: Top Bitcoin miners produced nearly $800M of BTC in Q1 2025

Bitdeer acquires 101 MW Alberta power project

In February 2025, Bitdeer acquired a fully licensed 101 megawatt (MW) gas-fired power project near Fox Creek, Alberta, for $21.7 million in cash, per the annual filing.

The site, with potential to scale up to 1 gigawatt, includes all necessary permits for construction and a 99 MW grid connection. The power plant is set to be developed with an EPC partner and is expected to be operational by the fourth quarter of 2026.

In March, the company also purchased 40 MW worth of liquid-cooled mining containers from Saiheat.

More recently, it was reported that Bitdeer is expanding its self-mining operations and investing in United States-based production. The shift came in response to cooling demand for its mining hardware from other miners.

“Our plan going forward is to prioritize our own self-mining,” Jeff LaBerge, Bitdeer’s head of capital markets and strategic initiatives, reportedly said. 

Additionally, on Feb. 28, 2025, Bitdeer launched a $20 million share repurchase program, effective through February 2026. To date, it has repurchased 1,056,500 Class A shares valued at about $12 million under this program.

Related: American Bitcoin’s ambition is to dominate mining — Hut 8 CEO

Bitcoin hashrate surges while miner revenues shrink

Bitdeer’s expansion comes as Bitcoin’s network computing power hit a record 1 sextillion hashes per second in early April, according to BitInfoCharts.

Bitcoin hashrate. Source: BitInfoCharts

A higher hashrate indicates that more miners (or more powerful machines) are competing to solve Bitcoin blocks. As competition rises, each individual miner’s chance of earning block rewards decreases, implying declining profitability.

Further hurting miner revenue are low transaction fees. As of now, the average Bitcoin transaction fee hovers around $1, down from over $16 per transfer in April last year, according to YCharts.

The low transaction fees and rising hashrate forced public miners to sell over 40% of their BTC production in March — the highest since late 2024.

Firms like Hive, Bitfarms and Ionic Digital reportedly sold more than 100% of their monthly output.

Magazine: Altcoin season to hit in Q2? Mantra’s plan to win trust: Hodler’s Digest, April 13 – 19

Cryptocurrency firms and exchanges are increasingly moving into Wall Street territory, launching more traditional investment offerings and showcasing the increasing connection between crypto and traditional finance (TradFi).

“There’s a growing synergy between traditional financial investments and the emerging crypto space,” according to Gracy Chen, the CEO of Bitget, the world’s sixth-largest crypto exchange.

“Crypto players are now checking out traditional finance as they see the opportunity to bridge it,” Chen told Cointelegraph.

“The lines are blurring — investors want flexibility, and products that can straddle both worlds are naturally attractive,” Chen said. “Some players see TradFi as a safety net; others, like Bitget, see it as a launchpad for broader adoption.” She added:

“In a volatile market, integration is smarter than isolation.”

Related: Trump’s tariff escalation exposes ‘deeper fractures’ in global financial system

Chen’s comments come a week after crypto exchange Kraken launched access to 11,000 US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as the first part of a global expansion into TradFi offerings, Cointelegraph reported on April 14.

Kraken’s expansion into traditional stock offerings was announced a week after the S&P 500’s record-breaking two-day loss of over $5 trillion, triggered by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal import tariffs announcement on April 2.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong echoed a similar vision. During the company’s latest earnings call, Armstrong said Coinbase aims to help modernize the global financial system and bring more of the world’s GDP onto crypto rails.

“We think that’s a more efficient, fair, free world that will accelerate progress, and it creates economic freedom,” he said during Coinbase’s latest earnings call.

Related: 70% chance of crypto bottoming before June amid trade fears: Nansen

Crypto and TradFi relationship is “inherently symbiotic” 

The relationship between “digital assets and more traditional assets is inherently symbiotic,” a spokesperson for Coinbase, the world’s third-largest crypto exchange, told Cointelegraph, adding:

“Core to our mission to enable economic freedom by onboarding one billion users to crypto, is supporting more of ‘traditional finance’ to be integrated with crypto.”

“As regulatory clarity and institutional adoption increase globally, we expect more of the global GDP to be running on crypto rails,” the spokesperson added.

Related: Bitcoin rally above $100K may follow US Treasury buybacks — Arthur Hayes

Blockchain technology brings “speed and transparency” while TradFi introduces “trust, scale and compliance,” in an “inevitable convergence,” Omri Hanover, general manager at Gems Trade cryptocurrency platform, told Cointelegraph.

“Together, TradFi and crypto unlock new pathways for both retail and institutional investors, especially those seeking exposure to digital assets without navigating the full complexity of native crypto products,” he explained.

Traditional investment platforms such as eToro and Robinhood have also launched cryptocurrency offerings.

Magazine: Altcoin season to hit in Q2? Mantra’s plan to win trust: Hodler’s Digest, April 13 – 19

Organized crime groups across Southeast Asia have scaled their operations by exploiting cryptocurrency — launching their own coins, exchanges and blockchain networks to launder billions of dollars, according to a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The report states that criminal syndicates are no longer just using existing crypto infrastructure. Instead, they are actively building tailored financial ecosystems to evade detection.

One example cited in the report is the Chinese-language ecosystem and marketplace known as Huione Guarantee, now rebranded as Haowang, which processed more than $24 billion in crypto linked to fraud over the past four years.

Value of crypto funds received by Huione Guarantee continues to rise. Source: UNODC

Headquartered in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the platform has grown to more than 970,000 users and thousands of interconnected vendors.

“Concerningly, Huione has recently launched a range of its own cryptocurrency-related products including a cryptocurrency exchange and trading application, online gambling platform, blockchain network, and US Dollar-backed stablecoin designed to circumvent government controls,” the report stated.

Related: CFTC partners up to warn on crypto pig butchering scams

Southeast Asia emerges as crypto crime hub

The UNODC warned that scam centers in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos have industrialized cybercrime, combining blockchain, artificial intelligence and stablecoins to fuel operations.

These centers run complex fraud schemes, including phishing, investment scams, and “pig butchering,” generating tens of billions annually, per the report. 

Some of the largest pig butchering syndicates are reportedly clustered around Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines, according to Cointelegraph Magazine.

Over the past year, several raids have led to the arrest of hundreds of people, including Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese nationals found at suspected cyber-enabled fraud operations.

In October 2024, Hong Kong police busted an alleged scam center and arrested 27 people they accused of using AI deepfakes to carry out a crypto romance investment scam that defrauded victims of more than $46 million.

Likewise, in December 2024, Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency arrested 792 people in a raid on a building in the country’s largest city that it claimed was a hub for a massive crypto romance scam operation.

Locations of reported scam centers in Mekong. Source: UNODC

Related: Coinbase users hit by $46M in suspected phishing scams

Custom stablecoins and exchanges evade oversight

The UN report highlights that syndicates are issuing their own stablecoins and creating private exchanges to bypass global financial regulations, which allows criminals to move funds seamlessly across borders without relying on mainstream platforms subject to Anti-Money Laundering controls.

Huione Guarantee, for instance, has launched a suite of crypto-related products, which also includes a cryptocurrency exchange, a blockchain network (Xone Chain) and an online gambling platform. The group also announced its launch of the Huione Visa card in February 2025.

While Southeast Asia remains the epicenter, the UNODC noted that these crypto-fueled operations are expanding into Africa, South America and the Pacific.

“The growing global impact of expanding Asian money laundering and underground banking networks cannot be understated,” the report stated, urging governments to close loopholes.

Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered

Organized crime groups across Southeast Asia have scaled their operations by exploiting cryptocurrency — launching their own coins, exchanges and blockchain networks to launder billions of dollars, according to a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The report states that criminal syndicates are no longer just using existing crypto infrastructure. Instead, they are actively building tailored financial ecosystems to evade detection.

One example cited in the report is the Chinese-language ecosystem and marketplace known as Huione Guarantee, now rebranded as Haowang, which processed more than $24 billion in crypto linked to fraud over the past four years.

Value of crypto funds received by Huione Guarantee continues to rise. Source: UNODC

Headquartered in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the platform has grown to more than 970,000 users and thousands of interconnected vendors.

“Concerningly, Huione has recently launched a range of its own cryptocurrency-related products including a cryptocurrency exchange and trading application, online gambling platform, blockchain network, and US Dollar-backed stablecoin designed to circumvent government controls,” the report stated.

Related: CFTC partners up to warn on crypto pig butchering scams

Southeast Asia emerges as crypto crime hub

The UNODC warned that scam centers in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos have industrialized cybercrime, combining blockchain, artificial intelligence and stablecoins to fuel operations.

These centers run complex fraud schemes, including phishing, investment scams, and “pig butchering,” generating tens of billions annually, per the report. 

Some of the largest pig butchering syndicates are reportedly clustered around Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines, according to Cointelegraph Magazine.

Over the past year, several raids have led to the arrest of hundreds of people, including Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese nationals found at suspected cyber-enabled fraud operations.

In October 2024, Hong Kong police busted an alleged scam center and arrested 27 people they accused of using AI deepfakes to carry out a crypto romance investment scam that defrauded victims of more than $46 million.

Likewise, in December 2024, Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency arrested 792 people in a raid on a building in the country’s largest city that it claimed was a hub for a massive crypto romance scam operation.

Locations of reported scam centers in Mekong. Source: UNODC

Related: Coinbase users hit by $46M in suspected phishing scams

Custom stablecoins and exchanges evade oversight

The UN report highlights that syndicates are issuing their own stablecoins and creating private exchanges to bypass global financial regulations, which allows criminals to move funds seamlessly across borders without relying on mainstream platforms subject to Anti-Money Laundering controls.

Huione Guarantee, for instance, has launched a suite of crypto-related products, which also includes a cryptocurrency exchange, a blockchain network (Xone Chain) and an online gambling platform. The group also announced its launch of the Huione Visa card in February 2025.

While Southeast Asia remains the epicenter, the UNODC noted that these crypto-fueled operations are expanding into Africa, South America and the Pacific.

“The growing global impact of expanding Asian money laundering and underground banking networks cannot be understated,” the report stated, urging governments to close loopholes.

Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered