Marathon Digital purchases record number of Bitcoin miners, aims to Expand Hashrate by 6 times

The Bitcoin mining firm Marathon Digital is buying a significant number of Bitmain Antminer S19 XP (140 TH/s) bitcoin miners, according to the Nasdaq-listed MARA.

The deal, according to Marathon of Las Vegas, was the largest single order of Antminer S19 XP bitcoin miners ever from Bitmain in terms of exahashes per second (EX/s) the new machines will generate. Marathon intends to have 199,000 active miners generating 23.3 EH/s by early 2023, up by around six times from present levels.

By mid-2022, the fast-growing miner expects to have 133,000 operational miners generating 13.3 EH/s, up from 199,000 in September. Marathon had 31,000 operational miners as of December 1, producing 3.2 EX/s. The company’s stock was up over 12% in Thursday trading at the time of publication.

Marathon aiming to boost its mining operations

Marathon has made many major purchases of miners this year, and in November, the company said that it seeks $500 million funding to solidify its mining operations.

Fred Thiel, Marathon Chief Executive Officer (CEO), said, “Given the strength of our balance sheet and our asset-light model, which allows us to invest our capital into mining machines rather than infrastructure, we were uniquely positioned to place the largest single order of S19 XPs, in terms of total hash rate, Bitmain has ever received,” Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement.

Bitmain has continued to rule the sector for years, and recently, as TheCoinRise reported, mining firm Argo Blockchain purchased 20k miners from the giant. On the other hand, ASIC miner manufacturing company MicroBT gives a strong competition to Bitmain.

BITMAIN said that Marathon is one of the most important clients of the company. It went on to say: 

“We are pleased to again support their progress with this order for our S19 XPs, which are among the most powerful and efficient bitcoin miners available today.”