Marathon Digital Put Up 1,500 Bitcoin (BTC) For Sale

Publicly traded Bitcoin (BTC) mining platform Marathon Digital announced on Thursday the sales of 1500 BTC in January and this marks the very first time that the company is taking advantage of the recent crypto price rally. 

The funds realized from the sales are targeted toward financing the firm’s operational costs and other expenses which may arise. Even after the sales, Marathon Digital still holds 11,418 BTC in its reserve.

“With bitcoin production increasing and becoming more consistent, we made the strategic decision to sell some of our bitcoin, as previously planned, to cover some of our operating expenses and for general corporate purposes,” Fred Thiel, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Marathon Digital said. “We intend to continue to sell a portion of our bitcoin holdings in 2023 to fund monthly operating costs.”

Since it began mining Bitcoin, Marathon Digital has held on to its mined coin even though it had indicated plans to start selling at some point. 

Now, the BTC miner has joined the likes of Riot Blockchain which offloaded 250 bitcoins in June 2022 after hoarding the asset for a very long time. Unlike Riot Blockchain which sold its mined BTC amidst a crispy crypto winter, Marathon Digital put out its holding at a time when BTC price was making a comeback.

BTC Price on a Recovery Rally

So far, the leading cryptocurrency has made more than a 40% recovery since it hit $15,000 in November 2022, as against its all-time high of $64,000 in 2021. At the time of this writing, BTC was trading at $23,339.06, according to CoinMarketCap. Out of the 11,418 Bitcoin currently held by Marathon Digital, 8,090 which is approximately valued at $187.2 million are unrestricted as of January 31st, 2023.

From its January records, the company had an operating hash rate of 11EH/s and is mulling plans to reach 23 EH/s toward the end of the first half of the year. Meanwhile, the BTC network hash rate is around 282.55 EH/s. This means that Marathon Digital has 4% of the global computing power. Speaking of its January Bitcoin production which surpassed its December production by 45%, Thiel said, 

“The improvement in our bitcoin production was primarily a result of our team’s ability to work in tandem with the new hosting provider in McCamey, Texas, to address the maintenance and technical issues at the King Mountain data center that had suppressed our bitcoin production in the fourth quarter of 2022.”