Digital Currency Group (DCG) CEO Barry Silbert has announced a major infrastructure milestone for Zcash (ZEC) mining through the firm’s controlled platform, Fortitude. The company officially confirmed the acquisition of a 12.5 MW data center in Prosser, Nebraska, for approximately $4.7 million. This purchase brings Fortitude’s total owned power portfolio to over 60 MW, solidifying its industrial base for mining Zcash.
The Prosser facility becomes Fortitude’s third site in Nebraska, joining a regional cluster that offers significant operational advantages. Local electricity rates of around $0.045 per kWh enable the company to slash the direct cost of mining one ZEC by roughly 40%, to just $40 per coin. This cost reduction is critical for maintaining profitability amid volatile prices and rising network difficulty.
Fortitude’s expansion also includes a $31.5 million contract with Bitmain for 9,000 Antminer Z15 Pro miners. Combined with the new infrastructure, the company expects to command more than 28% of the Zcash network hash rate, exerting considerable influence over the privacy-focused blockchain. Silbert, who has long championed financial privacy as a “fundamental right,” views Zcash as his next “large asymmetric bet.” He argues that Bitcoin has lost anonymity due to analytics services and that up to 10% of Bitcoin’s liquidity—worth about $128 billion—could flow into privacy coins like Zcash.
The acquisition unfolds alongside Fortitude’s plans to merge with publicly traded medical technology company HeartSciences (HSCS) in an all-stock transaction. The preliminary proxy statement is under SEC review. If approved, the merger would close in the second half of 2026, with the ticker changing to TUDE and listing the first institutional Zcash mining platform on Nasdaq.
