Riot Platforms Q1 2026 Operations Report: Compute capacity up 26% year over year, but Bitcoin holdings down 18% to 15,680 coins

Riot Platforms (Nasdaq ticker: RIOT) on April 2 released its unaudited production and operational data for Q1 2026. While the report shows ongoing expansion in computing power, the company chose to sell Bitcoin at a large scale, causing its holdings to fall noticeably.

Q1 Key Data Comparison

Sold 3,778 Bitcoin at a large scale, net proceeds of nearly $290 million

The most striking figure in Q1 is that Riot’s Bitcoin holdings dropped sharply from 19,223 Bitcoin in the same period last year to 15,680 Bitcoin (including 5,802 restricted Bitcoin). The main reason is that Riot sold 3,778 Bitcoin during the quarter, with an average selling price of $76,626, generating net proceeds of approximately $289.5 million. There were no sales recorded in the same period last year. This is a rare large-scale cash-out action for Riot in recent years, and may reflect the company actively raising capital for its data center expansion.

Strong growth in computing power, electricity costs hitting a new low

Although Bitcoin production fell slightly, the computing-power-level data still shows expansion momentum. Deployed computing power increased 26% year over year to 42.5 EH/s, and average computational capacity also rose 23% year over year to 36.4 EH/s. Electricity costs are Riot’s core competitive strength: all-in electricity cost (including all transmission fees, after deducting electricity incentives) fell to 3.0 cents per kWh, down 21% from 3.8 cents per kWh in the same period last year.

A particularly notable point is the large increase in revenue from Demand Response. By participating in Demand Response programs from Texas’s ERCOT and the Midwestern MISO power grid, Riot received approximately $7.5 million in incentives, up 278% from $2.0 million in the same period last year—an important component of its low electricity cost strategy.

Strategic shift: from mining to large-scale data center development

In its announcement, Riot emphasized that the company is shifting from being a pure Bitcoin miner to a large data center developer, to meet the growth in demand for high-density computing. Its vertical integration strategy spans Bitcoin mining, engineering design, and facility operations in Texas and Kentucky. Its engineering and manufacturing capabilities are distributed between Denver and Houston.

Miner efficiency improved slightly from 21.0 J/TH to 20.2 J/TH, indicating that the equipment continues to be upgraded. Riot plans to attend multiple investor conferences in May, including the Needham TMT conference (New York), the Macquarie Asia conference (Hong Kong), and more. Its subsequent capital planning is worth keeping a close watch.

This article Riot Platforms Q1 2026 operational report: computing power up 26%, but Bitcoin holdings shrink 18% to 15,680 first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.