A bitcoin mining giant is ahead of schedule on its post-halving expansion

Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital is ahead of schedule on its growth plans after a halving event that is expected to highlight segment winners and losers. 

The Florida-based company’s energized hash rate stood at 27.8 exahash per second (EH/s) on March 31. 

Executives had said in February that Marathon intended to grow its hash rate by about 35% in 2024 and reach 50 EH/s by the end of 2025.

Read more: Marathon Digital ready to deploy ‘dry powder’ in push to double hash rate

But that 50 EH/s target could be attainable by the time 2024 wraps up, Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said in a Thursday statement.

The amended growth projection timeline is a result of its capacity boost via acquisitions, the chief executive noted. The company also has access to hash rate through current machine orders and options. 

“With our current liquidity position, this growth target is also fully funded and there is no need for us to raise additional capital to achieve our objective,” Thiel added in a statement. 

Marathon had $324 million in cash and 17,381 BTC on its balance sheet at the end of March. The company’s BTC stack was worth about $1.1 billion based on Friday morning’s bitcoin price.

The miner finalized the purchase of two mining facilities in Texas and Nebraska earlier this year before then buying an additional Texas site owned by Applied Digital for $87 million in cash. 

Read more: Miner Marathon poised to acquire, expand after Bitcoin halving, exec says

Thiel said that as the company grows to 50 EH/s, it expects to improve its fleet efficiency to 21 joules per terahash (J/PH). 

Gaining scale and improving efficiency have been top of mind for miners around the bitcoin halving, which occurred last week. The event resulted in a reduction of per-block mining rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.

Industry watchers have said they expect less efficient miners with higher power costs and less access to capital to struggle in the weeks and months following the halving, with segment consolidation likely.

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