Canadian crypto miner Hut 8 (HUT) has inked an agreement to purchase all 960 Whatsminer M31S+ rigs from hosting client TAAL.

The purchase of the machines will increase Hut 8’s total hashrate by 81 petahash per second (PH/s) to 2.62 exahash per second (EH/s), said the company in a press release.The deal is expected to close on May 1, and will make Hut 8 an owner of the mining rigs, rather than having to pay rent for their usage to TAAL.“The incremental capacity will deliver an immediate hashrate benefit as ASIC miners are already on-site, installed and hashing," said Hut 8’s CEO Jaime Leverton. The company on April 5 said it was mining an average of 11.1 bitcoins per day in March, and held 6,460 bitcoins on its balance sheet.Mining peer Argo Blockchain in March made a similar move to become 100% self-mining with a deal for a swap of mining rigs with its hosting client, Core Scientific.Hut 8 is up about 3% on Tuesday morning, inline with its mining peers as bitcoin (BTC) gains more than 5% to $41,660.