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Fortitude Mining just dropped $31.5 million on Zcash mining hardware. The Digital Currency Group subsidiary signed an agreement with Bitmain to purchase 9,000 Antminer Z15 Pro units at $3,499 per machine, a deal that positions the company as one of the most aggressively expanding miners in the privacy coin space.
Zcash has staged a dramatic comeback, with trailing twelve-month returns exceeding 1,000% as of mid-June 2026. Fortitude is betting that run has legs.
The hardware and the math
The Antminer Z15 Pro is Bitmain’s latest Equihash miner, offering a hashrate of 840 KSol/s with energy efficiency rated at 3.31 J/KSol. When Bitmain launched the unit in May 2026, the sticker price was $4,999. Fortitude negotiated each unit down to $3,499, saving roughly $1,500 per machine. Across 9,000 units, that’s a $13.5 million discount from list price.
As of May 31, 2026, Fortitude was already mining at an annualized rate of 157,000 ZEC, which works out to about 366 ZEC per day. With ZEC trading between $460 and $500 in June 2026, that daily output translates to roughly $168K to $183K in revenue per day before costs.
Cutting costs in Nebraska
Fortitude energized a new self-built 12 MW facility in Grand Island, Nebraska on July 28, 2026, just two days before announcing the Bitmain deal. The Nebraska site is projected to reduce Fortitude’s direct cash mining costs by approximately 43%, dropping from around $70 per ZEC to roughly $40 per ZEC.
The Nasdaq play
Fortitude is set to merge with HeartSciences, a Nasdaq-listed medical device company trading under the ticker HSCS. After the merger completes, Fortitude plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE in the second half of 2026.
For a company that only launched in January 2025, the trajectory has been remarkably steep. In roughly 18 months, Fortitude went from zero to an annualized production rate of 157,000 ZEC, built its own mining facilities, and now sits on the doorstep of a public listing.
What this means for investors
Investors watching the TUDE listing should pay close attention to three metrics once the company goes public: hashrate as a percentage of total Zcash network hashrate, all-in sustaining cost per ZEC mined, and the company’s ZEC treasury strategy. Whether Fortitude holds mined coins or sells them immediately will tell you a lot about management’s conviction in ZEC’s long-term trajectory.
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