US-based bitcoin miner Core Scientific reportedly garnered a $500 million fundraiser led by major financial players including BlackRock, Apollo Capital, Kensico Capital, Ibex Investors, and others.

The company filed for bankruptcy late last year, but continued to mine BTC to pay off creditors.

Traditional financial firms flock to help

According to a court file seen by Bloomberg, BlackRock and several other high-profile investors lent approximately $500 million to Core Scientific through the purchase of its secured convertible notes. Ibex Investors was the largest contributor to the funding, lending almost $100 million.

BlackRock lent $38 million through note purchases, while Apollo Capital Management bought $22.6 million and $11 million in April and August, respectively.

Both asset managers donated $23 million in total to Core Scientific’s debtor-in-possession loan so that it could continue mining bitcoin despite its troubles.

The prolonged bear market and plummeting price of the leading digital asset significantly hurt the cryptominer, which archived for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a few days before Christmas. Despite this, the entity saw its share price rise in the following weeks. CORZQ is currently trading around $0.11, compared to $0.05 almost a month ago.

However, its market capitalization of around $41 million is far from the $4.3 billion reached in early 2022 (when listed on Nasdaq).

Mining remains undisturbed

Regardless of its multi-billion dollar losses in 2022, laid off employees and bankruptcy filing, Core Scientific mined 1,435 BTC in December. By comparison, November production was 1,356 BTC. It also increased its auto-mining hash rate from 15.4 EH/s to 15.7 EH/s.

In addition, the organization provided data center colocation services and operational support for 91,000 customer-owned ASIC servers (in November) and 80,500 (in December), representing approximately 37% and 34% of the fleet. mining operation in those months. Those servers produced 795 BTC in November and 931 BTC in the following month.

The results came despite numerous data center closures, which accounted for 5,828 and 17,179 megawatt hours (in November and December, respectively). Core revealed that it has partnered with utility companies to ensure the stability of the power grid.

Its main facilities remain distributed in Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, North Dakota and North Carolina.