Marathon miner plans to double hashrate by the end of the year

What’s new? One of the world’s largest bitcoin miners Marathon Digital (MARA) has increased its 2024 hashrate target to 50 EH/s. The new target assumes 100% growth within a year and is fully funded based on Marathon’s current liquidity.

Press release

What else is known? Marathon started 2024 with a hashrate of 24,7 EH/s and initially planned to increase it by 46%, to 35-37 EH/s by the end of the year. The decision to increase the target was based on recent purchases of additional equipment.

“Given the amount of capacity we have available following our recent acquisitions and the amount of hash rate we have access to through current machine orders and options, we now believe it is possible for us to double the scale of Marathon’s mining operations,” said chairman and CEO Fred Thiel. He specified that the current liquidity allows the company to self-finance the achievement of such a figure without raising additional capital.

In December, Marathon mined 1853 bitcoins, which was a record monthly figure among publicly traded mining companies.

In February this year, Marathon launched Anduro, a programmable layer 2 (L2) network based on the bitcoin blockchain, to spur development and wider adoption of BTC.

US-based Marathon operates 11 farms with a total fleet of 225 580 rigs and a capacity of 730 MW. The company’s facilities are located in the states of Texas and North Dakota, as well as in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and the Paraguayan city of Hernandarias. The company utilizes a variety of energy sources, including renewable energy, and its share of the bitcoin network reaches 4,5%.

At the time of writing, its MARA shares are trading at $19,01, having lost 0,42% overnight. The drop since the beginning of the year amounted to 28,64%.

In the run-up to the halving, shares of major miners, including MARA, as well as mining exchange-traded funds saw weekly declines of more than 10%. The fourth halving of the bitcoin network took place on April 20 and reduced the reward for mining a block from 6,25 to 3,125 coins. The event occurs every four years and the next halving is expected to take place in April 2028.

Traders were probably expecting a decline in company profitability as a result of the reduction in block awards. Fred Thiel stated that to maintain profitability after the halving, a company should spend no more than $46 000 to mine a single coin. The current rate of the asset itself on Binance is $64 456 (+0,88% for the day).