London-listed Hamak Strategy – a company pursuing a dual strategy of gold exploration in West Africa and disciplined Bitcoin treasury management – has announced that, following the recent price appreciation of Bitcoin (BTC), it has completed the sale of eight BTC on September 18 at a price of £60 314.54 (about $80 671) per BTC, generating gross proceeds of £482 516.32.

In a statement to shareholders, Hamak says proceeds will be used to progress the preliminary economic assessment (PEA) at its Akoko gold project, in Ghana, as well as retire a portion of the company’s existing debt and for general working capital purposes.

The company says the sale is solely intended to address these short-term funding objectives and leaves Hamak’s longer-term commitment to both gold and BTC unchanged.

“This is a purposeful step forward for Hamak. Our Bitcoin treasury gives us financial flexibility, and we are using a measured portion of it to support advancing the Akoko PEA as well as reduce debt and provide short-term working capital. We retain 18 BTC and remain firmly committed to Bitcoin as a core part of our strategy.

“Supporting the PEA will help us assess the project’s development potential and make informed decisions about its future,” says Hamak chief strategy officer and executive director Mike Murphy.

Hamak says several Snowden Optiro technical consultants have recently completed a site visit to the Akoko project, where they reviewed the project, site logistics and mineral resource areas that will be included in the overall study for an openpit, heap-leach gold mining operation. 

Following on from this visit, Snowden will now generate proposed openpit mining shells and determine an appropriate mine schedule for possibly two openpits at Akoko North and South, respectively. 

Akobo says the pit shells will primarily be focused on the 124 000 oz gold oxide resource contained from surface to a depth of 50 m.

The company says a detailed drone survey is scheduled to be flown to provide a centimeter-accurate topographic profile, which will assist Snowden in determining the optimum infrastructure footprint to support the recommended openpit, to include access and haul roads, location of ore and waste dumps, heap-leach pads and processing and recovery plants.

Snowden will also be recommending further metallurgical testwork on material contained within these proposed pits, using a combination of Hamak’s recent drill samples as well as collecting material from mineralised pit faces exposed from certain artisanal gold mining activity.

Previous metallurgical testwork on fine bottle roll testwork returned between 85% and 95% gold recovery rates.

“I am very positive about Hamak’s future. We have a clear direction: advance our gold assets and maintain a meaningful Bitcoin treasury.

“Both remain central to our ambition for the company. Our focus now is on turning that strategy into progress for shareholders, with disciplined financial management and delivery at Akoko,” says Murphy.