Leading BTC miner Marathon has started tagging blocks mined in the US with a corresponding label

What’s new? Marathon Digital, the world's largest bitcoin miner with a capitalisation of $4,44 billion, has announced that it will be assigning all of its blocks mined in the US the appropriate label: “Made in the USA.” "MARA is Team USA, proudly declared in each American-made bitcoin block we mine," the firm said.

Source: X.com

What else is known? CEO Fred Thiel emphasized that Marathon is the only major miner capable of this initiative, as the company has its own MARA Pool and can guarantee that all blocks within it are indeed produced in the US.

Earlier, Donald Trump said in a campaign speech that all remaining bitcoins should be mined in the US as it would boost the country's energy industry. After that, the shares of US mining companies showed a sharp rise and outperformed bitcoin in terms of returns.

Later, during the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Trump promised that if re-elected as president, he would provide miners with the electricity needed to mine more bitcoins domestically.

Marathon is the world's largest mining company. Its shares under the ticker MARA are trading at $15,11 on the Nasdaq, having lost 11,3% overnight. Since the beginning of the year, it has fallen by 43,3%. In early August, the company published a report on the results of the second quarter, where it reported revenues of $145,1 million, which was less than the 157,9 million forecasted by analysts. Immediately after that, the value of MARA fell by 8% overnight.

The company explained that the results of the reporting period were affected by equipment and power channel failures, increased network hashrate and April halving. The company also sold 51% of the bitcoins mined during the quarter to cover operating expenses, but announced the purchase of $100 million worth of coins on the open market. It now intends to shift to a strategy of accumulating and holding bitcoins on its balance sheet. Marathon currently holds over 20 000 BTC.

Despite these challenges, the company achieved a record-breaking hashrate of 31,5 EH/s in Q2, and left its year-end target of 50 EH/s in place.

Also this week, the company announced a $250 million private placement of bonds to institutional investors maturing in 2031. Marathon intends to use the proceeds to buy bitcoins, make strategic acquisitions and repay debt.

In June, Marathon said it had been mining native Kaspa (KAS) blockchain tokens in addition to bitcoin since September last year to diversify its revenues. The company has also started exploring options to sell excess heat to heat residential neighbourhoods.

In April this year, the bitcoin blockchain experienced its fourth halving, which again halved the reward for mining blocks (to 3,125 BTC). As a result, many miners started buying additional rigs to increase capacity and looking for alternative sources of income, such as renting out rigs to AI startups for computing.

As a result of the halving, daily revenue for industry companies fell below $3 million in May. In the last two weeks, the figure continued its gradual decline and by 11 August it reached its lowest since October last year at $2,54 million.