Luxor Starts First-of-Its-Kind Bitcoin Mining Rig Marketplace for Large-Scale Orders

Bitcoin mining services firm Luxor Technologies is starting the industry's first unified marketplace for new mining machines so that buyers and sellers can directly connect through a request-for-quote system (RFQ). The crypto mining market is flooded with stock offloaded by struggling companies.

The marketplace comes when thousands of discounted machines have further overwhelmed an already inundated market. In 2022, the industry did not have enough infrastructure to plug machines into and start bringing in revenue, so hundreds of thousands of machines were left unused.

As the bear market hit the sector, miners started selling more machines, further depressing prices. The price of mining rigs has dropped about 85% in the past year, data from Luxor shows.

In the new platform buyers and sellers can create requests for machines in an open-bid system and directly negotiate prices. Currently, the market operates primarily through brokers, including Luxor. That is an an "opaque and regionally fragmented market" that Luxor's RFQ system will unify, thereby "improving price discovery and increasing liquidity in the secondary market," the firm said in Wednesday press release.

Compass Mining also aggregates listings for mining rigs on sale on a separate platform. However, the volume is small, with listings mostly ranging between one to ten machines.

Brokers can sign up to the platform and Luxor will essentially stop acting as a broker. Luxor will take a commission from the party that responds to the request, whether it is a seller or a buyer, which will also encourage market making on the platform, said Colin Harper, head of content and research at Luxor.

About $1.6 million worth of deals have closed so far on the first day of the platform's operation.

Bankruptcies of giants in the space including Celsius Mining and Core Scientific could mean more mining rigs for sale.

"Before, buyers and sellers relied on a patchwork of venues to buy and sell mining hardware. Now, they can observe offers, listings and settlement prices all in one place, which improves pricing transparency and expedites the mining hardware procurement process," Luxor Operations Manager Lauren Lin said in the press release.

Read more: A Huge Glut of Bitcoin Mining Rigs Is Sitting Unused in Boxes

CORRECTION (Feb. 1, 15:19 UTC): Corrects Luxor's role on the platform. An earlier version of this story said it would continue to be a broker.