Marathon Digital, the largest Bitcoin mining outfit, sold 63% of the 616 bitcoins mined in May, amounting to 390 bitcoins. Its balance sheets revealed $290.4 million worth of cash and cash equivalents by the end of the month.
Marathon’s 616 bitcoins generated was a massive difference compared to other mining companies, as CleanSpark followed it with 417 bitcoins and Riot Platforms with 215 bitcoins. CleanSpark only sold 2.43 bitcoins and Riot none.
The Bitcoin halving is pushing miners toward making their processes more efficient and allowing them to win more blocks, which will compensate for the losses they endure due to the halving. Bitcoin’s halving occurs every four years (approximately) or every 210,000 blocks as block rewards are reduced by half – thus, halving. The last one occurred in April, with miner rewards reduced to 3.125 bitcoins from 6.25 per block.
Marathon is going hard at winning more blocks, which resulted in its increased reward production in May. It mined 170 blocks last month, increasing its block winning by 32% from April. Fred Thiel, Chairman and CEO of Marathon Digital, stated, “In May, we mitigated the impact of the April Halving event by increasing the number of blocks won, resulting in the production of 616 Bitcoin, a decline of only 27%.”
Mining firms are racing to expand their operations because of shrinking rewards. For instance, Marathon is expanding internationally. It struck a deal with the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum of the Republic of Kenya to enhance the country’s renewable energy projects and utilize them for mining activity. Marathon has also instituted a pilot renewable energy project in Paraguay for the same purposes. The firm looks to turn to overseas regions and derive at least 50% of its revenues from such geographies by 2028.
CleanSpark is taking a different approach, consolidating several mining outfits under its umbrella to boast more resources and win more Bitcoin blocks. It has recently become very active in the mergers & acquisitions (M&A) space.
Image by Victorumeche from Pixabay
