Fortitude Powers Up 12 MW Zcash Mine in Nebraska, Cuts Cost to Mine a Coin Nearly in Half ⚡

Zcash mining operator Fortitude has activated a 12-megawatt facility in Grand Island, Nebraska, completing its first greenfield data center and expanding its owned power portfolio to more than 60 megawatts across seven sites. The Digital Currency Group-owned company announced Tuesday that the site has finished construction and electrical testing and is ready for commercial operations.

The facility is expected to lower Fortitude's direct cash cost of mining Zcash from about $70 per coin to roughly $40 per coin, assuming successful deployment of mining equipment and stable power, network and market conditions. The company attributed the projected savings to lower-cost owned power and more efficient next-generation mining hardware. The site is expected to purchase electricity for about $0.045 per kilowatt-hour.

Fortitude CEO Andrea Childs framed the buildout as part of a deliberate vertical-integration strategy. "Our power strategy is owned-and-operated, and that discipline is what underpins our vertically integrated Zcash strategy and our venture mining platform," Childs told Decrypt. "Owning the asset rather than leasing capacity from someone whose incentives run opposite to ours is intended to give us a degree of flexibility that we believe few operators have."

The Grand Island site sits between two solar generation facilities and next to a substation with excess capacity, allowing it to operate as an interruptible load that can reduce electricity consumption during periods of peak demand. Zcash currently trades for $489 per coin at an $8 billion market capitalization.

The milestone comes ahead of Fortitude's planned public listing through its previously announced business combination with HeartSciences (Nasdaq: HSCS), a publicly traded medical technology company. Fortitude launched in January 2025 from Digital Currency Group's mining division at Foundry to mine Bitcoin and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies through a venture mining strategy, reinvesting mining profits into new equipment and site acquisitions.

Childs said the company views Zcash's mining economics as more open than Bitcoin's. "In our view, Zcash today is at a completely different stage than Bitcoin. Our perspective is that Bitcoin's mining economics are mature and crowded when compared to Zcash," Childs said. "We believe Zcash's time is now, and our vertically integrated structure, coupled with our long-term conviction and history mining the asset, has positioned us to benefit from Zcash's continued growth and importance in the future of the financial system."

The Nebraska project arrives as cryptocurrency miners compete for low-cost power amid rising demand from AI data centers, with Grand Island officials noting that Fortitude's mining facility was designed to operate as a flexible grid resource while limiting its impact on the surrounding community.