DCG’s Fortitude Closes 12.5 MW Nebraska Deal for Net $4.7M as Buildout Pace Accelerates

Fortitude Mining Holdings closed three infrastructure moves in seven days. On July 28, the Digital Currency Group-owned Zcash miner energized its first self-built facility, 12 MW in Grand Island, Nebraska. On July 30, it signed a definitive agreement with Bitmain for 9,000 Antminer Z15 Pro units. On August 4, it closed the acquisition of a 12.5 MW facility in Prosser, Nebraska, for $6.25 million, with roughly $1.45 million in credits (a hosting deposit and a miner sale) bringing the net new cash to close to approximately $4.7 million.

Fortitude’s last comparable move before this stretch was acquiring its Aurora, Nebraska site on October 22, 2025, close to nine months earlier, a $7.65 million deal, per Fortitude’s own SEC disclosure, with about $1.58 million of that covered by an existing hosting deposit. Three moves compressed into a week, after nine months of relative quiet, is the actual story here, more than any single transaction’s size.

Fortitude completes the acquisition of a 12.5 MW Prosser, Nebraska Facility.

Our third Nebraska site, and another step toward a vertically integrated Zcash mining platform. $ZEC $HSCS

Read more: https://t.co/u3pE9X7aaE.

— Fortitude (@FortitudeCrypto) August 4, 2026

July 28: Grand Island Comes Online

Grand Island is Fortitude’s first ground-up facility rather than an acquired one. The site came online alongside the Zcash July 28 Upgrade, as the network prepared for its Ironwood activation. The company says the 12 MW site cuts its direct cash cost of mining ZEC from roughly $70 to around $40 per coin., largely on the strength of a low, stabilized power rate. It pushed Fortitude’s contracted power portfolio above 60 MW at the time.

July 30: The Bitmain Order

Two days later, Fortitude executed a definitive purchase agreement with Bitmain for 9,000 Antminer Z15 Pro units, Equihash-specific ASICs built for Zcash rather than general-purpose mining hardware.The order expands Fortitude’s fleet in the same window it was bringing new power capacity online, pairing hash rate and power growth rather than sequencing one after the other.  The expansion also comes as ZEC reclaims $500, bringing renewed attention to the economics of Zcash mining.

August 4: Prosser Closes

The Prosser deal itself: $6.25 million for the real property and improvements, offset by a roughly $985,000 hosting-deposit credit and about $465,500 from selling 1,400 T21 miners at $1.75 per terahash, both applied against the purchase price. Net new cash to close came to approximately $4.7 million, funded entirely from Fortitude’s balance sheet.

Component	Amount
Purchase price	$6.25M
Hosting deposit credit	~$985,000
T21 miner sale credit (1,400 units @ $1.75/TH)	~$465,500
Net new cash to close	~$4.7M

The facility carries a 90-day construction warranty plus assigned manufacturer warranties, runs at an estimated $0.045 per kWh, and gives Fortitude full ownership of the land, building, and an on-site 67 kV substation. It sits in the Southwest Power Pool market, giving Fortitude the ability to take market pricing and participate in demand-response programs. Prosser is Fortitude’s third Nebraska site, alongside Grand Island and Aurora, and brings its total owned power portfolio to more than 60 MW across seven sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, and New York.

Childs and Ellingson on ‘Disciplined’ Capital

• CEO Andrea Childs frames Prosser as part of building “a vertically-integrated platform designed to maximize the value of every megawatt we own.”
• CFO Erik Ellingson’s framing is more specific about the mechanics: Prosser was “an operating asset acquired with cash on hand that was generating revenue at close.”
• Full ownership of the land, building, and substation gives Fortitude “control of our cost structure and real flexibility in how we operate the site.”
• Both statements describe the same thing from different angles: owning infrastructure outright rather than leasing capacity from third parties.
• That ownership strategy is the throughline connecting all three of this week’s moves.

The Backdrop: A Pivot from Bitcoin to Zcash, and a Pending Public Listing

Per Fortitude’s own SEC filing, the company launched in January 2025 out of DCG’s Foundry mining division, initially mining Bitcoin and other proof-of-work assets before anchoring its strategy on Zcash specifically. Childs has framed that choice around where each asset sits in its mining-economics lifecycle: Bitcoin’s mining economics, in her view, are “mature and crowded” compared to Zcash’s. Fortitude’s path to public markets runs through a proposed all-stock combination with HeartSciences Inc. (Nasdaq: HSCS), announced in June 2026 and still pending, expected to close in the second half of the year, after which the combined company is expected to trade as “TUDE.”

Fortitude’s own stated case for going public is that public-company status will give it, in Childs’s announcement, “flexibility and access to capital to accelerate” its buildout. All three of this week’s moves were funded on cash already on hand, before that capital-access argument has actually materialized. Either Fortitude has more balance-sheet cash to deploy than the “why go public” framing implies, or the company is front-loading what it can while the merger is still pending.