Canaan Inc. shares saw a remarkable rise of over 26% in early trading on Thursday after securing a substantial order for 50,000 mining rigs.

The company revealed that a U.S.-based business purchased the state-of-the-art “Avalon A15 Pro” mining machines, marking Canaan’s largest sale in over three years. While the identity of the buyer remains undisclosed, Canaan’s CEO, Nangeng Zhang, stated that this transaction underscores both companies’ “confidence in the long-term growth” of Bitcoin mining and indicates the need for advanced, efficient infrastructure.

According to the Hashrate Index, the U.S. now holds 36% of the global Bitcoin hashrate, positioning it as the largest mining hub.

Canaan, a mining hardware firm launched in Beijing in 2013, experienced their stock rise to $1.31 on Nasdaq at the time of reporting—that’s a 26.4% increase. Remarkably, their shares have increased over 50% within the last six months, despite a year-to-date decline of 40%.

Status of Bitcoin Mining

Bitcoin mining entails utilizing computational power to verify transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain, as well as rewarding miners with newly generated Bitcoin while securing the network.

This process is critical as it increases the coin distributions but becomes increasingly challenging over time with periodic difficulty adjustments. As of early September, Bitcoin mining difficulty reached historical highs, indicated by a record setting of 150.84 trillion on Thursday, indicating mining is more challenging now than it has ever been.

Rising mining difficulties and costs have pushed some companies, such as Bit Digital, to halt operations in favor of less costly ventures. However, some independent miners have still managed to earn substantial rewards, with reported achievements of over $373,000 from successfully mining blocks.

For a comprehensive understanding, you can read more in our magazine article: Bitcoin vs. the quantum computer threat — Timeline and solutions (2025–2035)