Marathon Digital Holdings Purchased 78,000 BTC Miners Worth $879 Million

In an announcement last week, bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital Holdings revealed that it made a “record purchase” of Bitmain ASIC rigs. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the purchase will cost the company over $879 million.

Marathon revealed broad details about its purchase last week during its announcement about its partnership with Bitmain to acquire a record-breaking number of mining rigs. The mining company didn’t unveil the number of miners it had purchased or the pricing, but all was revealed after the SEC filing.

Marathon acquired about 78,000 new Antminer S19 XP miners, costing the company about $879,060,000. Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement that this new purchase means the company will approximately own 199,000 miners overall “and 23.3 EH/s by early 2023.”

According to the agreement, Bitmain will give Marathon 13,000 miners every month between July and December 2022. On the other hand, Marathon will be paying about 35% of the total amount within two days of the execution of the contract.

As for the remaining 65%, Marathon will pay the balance separately as each new batch of miners arrives. Specifically, the company will pay 35% at least six months before the batch is shipped out to them and the remaining 30% a month before the shipment date.

Marathon Digital Holdings is one of the biggest bitcoin miners in the US capital markets. It trades on Nasdaq with the ticker MARA, and it has done a fantastic job at outperforming the BTC price in 2021. The company was able to gain 212.90% YTD, while during that same time, Bitcoin also increased 64.40%.

US Bitcoin miners experienced more profits in 2021 as a significant portion of the Bitcoin hashrate went offline. This came when China had a severe crackdown against any crypto-related activity during the summer. Since China, the country with the largest share of hashrate, had to close down operations, it was no longer difficult to network mine. As a result, the amount of BTC that miners could earn increased.

However, Chinese miners have begun picking themselves up and getting back on track, as most have successfully relocated their operations to other countries. As such, the industry is once again competitive for miners, ultimately hurting miners’ productivity in the USA.

Not only is BTC mining competitive again, Marathon’s productivity suffered greatly in November 2021 when it had maintenance work done on its power plants. The mining company only mined 196 bitcoin during that month, a significant drop from its 417.7 in October.