Marathon Digital has revised its 2024 hash rate goal upwards from 35-37 exahashes per second (EH/s) to 50 EH/s following recent acquisitions that expanded its capacity.
Per an April 25 press release, Marathon’s CEO, Fred Thiel, said that the firm could potentially double its mining scale in 2024 owing to the added capacity.
Thiel also confirmed that the new target would be “fully funded,” with no need to raise additional capital.
The company recently acquired a 200-megawatt Bitcoin mining facility from Digital Applied for $87.3 million in March, and two additional sites with a combined capacity of 390 megawatts were acquired from Generate Capital for $179 million in December.
Currently, Marathon’s operations achieve a hash rate of 24.7 EH/s, placing it ahead of Core Scientific and Riot Platforms, which have hash rates of 16.9 EH/s and 12.4 EH/s respectively, as per Hashrate Index.
If Marathon meets its 50 EH/s target, it will have increased its hash rate by more than 100% from the beginning of 2024.
Marathon’s (MARA) stock declined 0.42% to $19.01 on April 25 before rallying 3.05% in after-hours trade on the announcement, according to Google Finance.
Marathon has climbed by more than 15% since the fourth Bitcoin halving event happened at block 840,000 on April 20 – a trend shared by other miners in the sector.
Much of the initial demand at block 840,000 was driven by memecoin and nonfungible token aficionados competing to inscribe and etch “rare satoshis” via the Runes protocol.
Despite this surge, transaction fees dropped to $28.20 by April 24, according to YCharts.
As the crypto mining sector shows robust growth, other Bitcoin mining firms like Riot Platforms are also seeing significant market movements.
On April 23, Riot’s shares surged by more than 20%, fueled by optimistic evaluations from analysts who foresee substantial growth in the company’s financial performance.
