Marathon Digital has recently raised its target for hash rate in 2024 from 35-37 exahashes per second (EH/s) to 50 EH/s due to recent acquisitions that have expanded its capacity.
In a press release on April 25, Marathon’s CEO, Fred Thiel, mentioned that the company could potentially double its mining scale by 2024 as a result of the increased capacity. Thiel also assured that the new goal would be fully funded and that there would be no need to raise additional capital.
The company recently purchased 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, surpassing Core Scientific and Riot Platforms, which have hash rates of 16.9 EH/s and 12.4 EH/s respectively, according to Hashrate Index. If Marathon reaches its 50 EH/s target, it will have more than doubled its hash rate since the beginning of 2024.
On April 25, Marathon’s stock (MARA) dropped by 0.42% to $19.01 but later increased by 3.05% in after-hours trading following the announcement, according to Google Finance.
Marathon has seen a rise of over 15% since the fourth Bitcoin halving event took place at block 840,000 on April 20, a trend also observed among other miners in the industry. The surge in demand at block 840,000 was driven by memecoin and nonfungible token enthusiasts competing to create “rare satoshis” using the Runes protocol.
Despite this surge, transaction fees decreased to $28.20 by April 24, as reported by YCharts. With the crypto mining sector displaying strong growth, companies like Riot Platforms are also experiencing significant market movements. On April 23, Riot’s shares surged by more than 20% due to positive evaluations from analysts predicting substantial growth in the company’s financial performance.