Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Tuesday, July 2, 2024- Marathon Digital, the largest public Bitcoin miner by market cap, announced Wednesday its expansion into altcoin mining to diversify revenue streams following Bitcoin’s latest halving event.
The altcoin, Kaspa (KAS), saw Marathon deploy its first application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners in September 2023.
Marathon purchased around 60 PH/s of Antminer KS3, KS5, and KS5 Pro ASICs from manufacturer Bitmain, which the company claims can generate up to 95% profit margins given the current network difficulty rate and price of KAS.
Currently, half of Marathon’s Kaspa hashrate is operational at its Texas facilities, with the remainder expected to go live in Q3. As of June 25, Marathon has mined 93 million KAS worth approximately $15 million.
In comparison, Marathon mined $176 million of Bitcoin in Q1 this year and holds 17,857 BTC ($1.1 billion) as of May 31.
Marathon boasts the largest public miner holdings and the second-largest corporate holding overall, behind MicroStrategy’s 226,331 BTC ($13.8 billion), according to Bitcoin Treasuries data.
Kaspa, the fifth-largest proof-of-work cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin, has a market cap of $4.2 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $128 million, according to CoinGecko. Kaspa’s circulating supply is approximately 24 billion KAS, with a current block reward of 103.83 KAS and a total supply of 28.7 billion KAS.
Kaspa employs a BlockDAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) consensus mechanism, allowing multiple blocks to be produced simultaneously. Kaspa processes one block every second compared to Bitcoin’s average of one every 10 minutes, potentially allowing Kaspa miners to earn more block rewards in a given timeframe, according to Marathon.
“By mining Kaspa, we are able to create a stream of revenue that is diversified from Bitcoin and that is directly tied to our core competencies in digital asset compute,” said Marathon Chief Growth Officer Adam Swick.
“Because of our existing infrastructure, our unique relationships with hardware manufacturers, our strong balance sheet, and the expertise of our team, Marathon was uniquely positioned to mine Kaspa and to capitalize on the higher margins that exist for those who can deploy Kaspa ASICs today,” Swick added.
“We look forward to continuing to support innovation in proof-of-work ecosystems.”
Marathon’s stock closed up 0.6% at $19.37 on Wednesday following the announcement and is currently trading up 2% at $19.75 in pre-market trading. Its share price is down 27% year-to-date, according to TradingView.
Marathan Press Release on this can be read here.
