Riot Platforms increases stake in Bitfarms to 14%

Bitcoin miner Riot Platform has announced that it has acquired an additional 1,432,063 shares of Bitfarms stock at a price of approximately $2.7 per share, totaling $3.87 million. Riot now holds 57.62 million shares of Bitfarms, representing approximately 14% ownership. This is Riot's latest move in its hostile takeover of Bitfarms.

Last month, Riot attempted to acquire Bitfarms for approximately $950 million. On Wednesday, Riot's CEO criticized Bitfarms' latest plan to block the acquisition.

In a statement, Riot's CEO Jason Les said that Bitfarms did not reach out to us in good faith privately, but instead responded by implementing an off-market poison pill plan triggered at a far lower threshold than the typical 20%.

Earlier this week, Bitfarms implemented a poison pill strategy to prevent a potential acquisition. Poison pill strategies aim to reduce a company's attractiveness and/or dilute the acquirer's ownership of the target.