Marathon Digital Holdings has announced an order for 78,000 of Bitmain’s latest generation Antminer S19 XP models. The model is Bitmain’s most powerful yet with a hashrate of 140 TH/s. The order is worth a total of $879.06 million. Marathon expects to have 199,000 miners deployed following fulfillment of this latest order after replacing some of its older equipment in order to increase the overall efficiency of its operations.
“Given the strength of our balance sheet and our asset-light model, which allows us to invest our capital into mining machines rather than infrastructure, we were uniquely positioned to place the largest single order of S19 XPs, in terms of total hash rate, Bitmain has ever received.” - Marathon Digital Holdings CEO Fred Thiel
Based on current delivery schedules, the order is due to be delivered in monthly batches of 13,000 units each from July 2022 to December 2022. Marathon will pay 35% of the total price within two days of signing the purchase order with further payments of 35% and 30% of the total price of each batch due 6 months and 1 month prior to delivery respectively.
Marathon bitcoin mining dominance
Marathon Digital Holdings share price has been volatile this year, much like bitcoin. Shares peaked in November 2021 and have since fallen more than 50% compared to bitcoin’s 30% decline over the same period. Despite the drop in share price, Marathon continues to be the largest public bitcoin in terms of market capitalization. The company held 7,649.1 bitcoin as of 1st December 2021.
Marathon Digital Holdings' monthly bitcoin production. Source: Marathon Digital Holdings
Hashrate migration
Marathon’s operations are located throughout the U.S. which has benefited from China’s mining ban. It is estimated that up to 35% of the global hashrate is now located in the U.S with its dominance forecasted to continue as publicly listed miners continue to expand their operations in North America.