Marathon’s Latest Purchase
Crypto mining company Marathon announced on Monday that it had struck a deal with Applied Digital to buy a 200-megawatt Texas-based Bitcoin mining facility for $87 million. Per the deal, Marathon is set to finance the purchase in cash.
A blog on Marathon’s website states that the new acquisition will push the firm’s total mining capacity to roughly 1.12 gigawatts. 54% of this figure is generated by mining facilities directly owned by Marathon.
Commenting on the deal, Marathon’s chairman, Fred Thiel, said the purchase from Applied Digital will reduce the cost of mining a single Bitcoin by about 20%. He added that the new facility will be expanded this year to increase its mining capacity by 100 megawatts.
Marathon performed exceptionally well last year, recording $388 million in revenue, most of which was generated in the fourth quarter. The company’s 2023 revenue represented a 230% jump from the previous year. Analysts attributed the growth in Marathon’s revenue to Bitcoin’s rally and a 200% surge in the firm’s Bitcoin production. The US-based mining company produced over 12,600 BTC in 2023.
Marathon Introduces Slipstream
Meanwhile, Marathon introduced Slipstream last month. Slipstream is a new service designed to speed up non-standard and large transactions on Bitcoin. The service comes at a time when Bitcoin miners are becoming more focused on transaction fees as part of their revenue due to declining mining rewards as a result of the halving event set for next month.
Analysts anticipate that Bitcoin halving will happen on April 20th. This event will reduce the miners’ rewards by 50%. Currently, these rewards stand at 6.25 BTC per block. After halving, they will drop to 3.125 BTC. Although the mining rewards will reduce after April 20th, analysts expect Bitcoin to rally, thus boosting the value of the miners’ revenue.
Marathon Buys More Mining Facilities
It is worth mentioning that over the past four months, Marathon has purchased two other mining facilities, with a combined cost of $176 million. One facility is based in Granbury, and the other is in Kearney.
