The depths of a bear market may not be the best time to raise funds but that is exactly what Blockstream is doing.

The crypto infrastructure firm has received fresh funding, but at a much lower valuation than previous rounds, according to a Dec. 7 Bloomberg report.

Blockstream was valued at $3.2 billion when it held its last Series B funding round, raising $210 million in August 2021. Today that valuation may have fallen almost 70% to below $1 billion, according to the report.

The company, founded in 2014, has raised $299 million in funding over four rounds, according to CrunchBase.

Blockstream CEO and cryptographer Adam Back did not share details of the latest funding round but did reveal that the capital will be invested into expanding the firm’s mining capacity.

“We rapidly sold out all of the capacity and have a big backlog of existing and new customers with miners seeking large-scale hosting with us.”

The firm works with Jack Dorsey’s Block (formerly Square) to develop a solar-powered Bitcoin mining facility. The mining farm will have 3.8 megawatts (MW) of electrical capacity using Tesla’s solar technology and its Lithium-ion 12 MWh “Megapack,” as reported by Cointelegraph in April.

Back acknowledged that Bitcoin (BTC) prices and mining profitability were down but added, “Hosting rates have risen over the last quarters and our mining services are a rapidly expanding, high-margin enterprise business for us.”

Bitcoin miners are suffering a triple whammy of high hash rates and difficulty, high energy prices, and low BTC prices. According to Hashrate Index, hash prices have fallen to near-record lows of around $0.064 per TH/s per day, impacting miner profitability. 

Related: Blockstream CEO Adam Back talks Bitcoin over a game of Jenga

In its monthly newsletter on Dec. 5, Blockstream revealed that its Blockstream Mining Note (BMN) token has earned around 5.37 BTC cumulatively in returns nearly halfway into its three-year term.

BMN is a European Union-compliant security token that provides non-United States qualified investors exposure to Bitcoin mining and represents 2,000 terahashes per second of hash rate from Blockstream's mining facilities.

The firm has also been promoting a new limited edition “Jade Transparent” hardware wallet, claiming that it is “hodling our Bitcoin into the 2090s and beyond.”