Marathon to buy 10,000 new ASIC miners

U.S.-based Marathon Patent Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA) recently announced purchasing 10,000 next-generation Antminer S-19j Pro miners from the Chinese hardware giant Bitmain Technologies Ltd. The block reward mining firm plans to use the new equipment at its Hardin, Montana data center. 

The S-19j Pro is part of the newly revealed lineup of miners announced at the Mining and Investment Summit on November 24. Per the terms of the deal, Marathon will receive an initial batch of 6,000 S-19j Pro Miners in August 2021. The remaining 4,000 miners are set to be delivered in September 2021.

Once all the ASIC miners are delivered and deployed, Marathon hardware inventory will comprise 33,560 ASIC miners, generating 3.56 EH/s of hash power. Its Hardin facility will consume approximately 100 MWs of power.

Merrick Okamoto, Chairman & CEO at Marathon, stated, “We are pleased to have successfully completed the purchase of all ASIC Miners required to fully utilize our 100 MW data center in Hardin MT.”

As part of its expansion plans, the Nasdaq-listed firm says it is working with energy partner, Beowulf Energy, to open a renewable energy powered facility in the northeastern United States. This mining center will initially provide Marathon with an additional 100 MWs of power and has the potential to increase to 250 MWs of power.

“We are now looking forward to our next phase of growth as we build out our second data center. The new facility will be powered primarily by clean, renewable power, which is not only cost-effective, but will also allow us to lower our carbon footprint,” Okamoto further added while touting the benefits of the agreement.

Marathon projects the cost to operate its second facility will be on par with the rates they have at their Hardin facility, e.g., $0.028 per kWh for power and $0.006 per kWh for hosting operations.

Marathon obviously has high hopes this massive purchase will help it garner a higher share of the BTC block subsidy reward. As hash power continues to rise on the BTC blockchain, fueled by price speculation on the token itself, Marathon is staking its future on a faulty foundation. 

Once the price of BTC inevitably falls as it has done in previous years, Marathon could find itself shutting off these new mining rigs to reduce the increased operation and electricity cost brought about by this purchase. 

See also: TAAL’s Jerry Chan presentation at CoinGeek Live, The Shift from Bitcoin “Miners” to “Transaction Processors”