Marathon Digital Diversifies from Bitcoin, Mines $16M Worth of Kaspa

Ruholamin Haqshanas

Last updated:

June 27, 2024, 03:00 EDT | 2 min read

Bitcoin mining giant Marathon Digital has announced its foray into mining Kaspa (KAS), a token designed to address Bitcoin’s scalability issue, as part of its diversification strategy.

Since September, Marathon Digital has mined approximately $16 million worth of Kaspa tokens, aiming to capitalize on the higher profit margins associated with Kaspa mining machines, which have reached up to 95% in some cases, the firm said in a recent press release.

“By mining Kaspa, we are able to create a stream of revenue that is diversified from Bitcoin,” Adam Swick, Marathon’s chief growth officer, said.

Swick further emphasized that Marathon was well-positioned to mine Kaspa and take advantage of the enhanced margins available to those who deploy Kaspa ASICs.

Marathon Mines 93 Million KAS Tokens

Since deploying its first batch of Kaspa miners in September 2023, Marathon has mined a total of 93 million KAS tokens.

Notably, the value of KAS has surged by 420% during this period, while Bitcoin has experienced a 135% increase.

Marathon has acquired around 60 petahashes of KS3, KS5, and KS5 Pro ASICs specifically for Kaspa mining, with half of the equipment currently operational and the rest scheduled to be installed in the third quarter.

Today we’re announcing that we have been actively mining Kaspa.

Diversification has been key to our investments in energy solutions and tech innovations, and it remains crucial in our digital asset compute operations. Read the full press release:

— MARA (@MarathonDH) June 26, 2024

However, Robert Samuels, Marathon’s Vice President of Investor Relations, clarified that the company’s primary focus remains on Bitcoin.

Samuels emphasized that Kaspa mining represents only 1% of Marathon’s energy capacity once fully deployed, dismissing any notion of a significant pivot in the company’s strategy.

Marathon has successfully mined 9,761 Bitcoins worth $594.9 million since September, indicating that its Kaspa mining operations contribute only a fraction of its total mining revenue.

The announcement of Marathon’s Kaspa mining activities led to a 2.4% rally in the price of KAS tokens, bringing the total value of Marathon’s KAS holdings to $16 million.

Kaspa is 5th Largest PoW Cryptocurrency

With a market capitalization of $4.1 billion, Kaspa currently ranks as the fifth largest proof-of-work cryptocurrency.

While there are currently 24 billion KAS tokens in circulation, the supply will be capped at 28.7 billion.

Similar to Bitcoin, Kaspa operates as a layer-1 protocol that facilitates transfers using its native token, KAS.

However, Kaspa distinguishes itself through its implementation of a “BlockDAG” architecture, derived from the Direct Acyclic Graph, where blocks are added to the network simultaneously rather than linearly.

Consequently, Kaspa achieves a significantly faster block rate, approximately one block per second, compared to Bitcoin’s approximate block time of 10 minutes.

Despite its progress, Kaspa still has a long way to go to compete with Bitcoin.

While Bitcoin attracts between 700,000 and 1 million daily unique active addresses, Kaspa currently hovers around the 20,000 mark in terms of network activity.

Last week, Marathon launched a 2-megawatt pilot project in the Satakunta region of Finland, which aims to warm the community using the heat generated from digital asset computing.

Bitcoin miners are seeking ways to augment their revenue following the 2024 Bitcoin halving, which reduced block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.

Marathon Digital Holdings has been actively exploring ways to monetize the excess heat generated by its Bitcoin mining facilities and data centers.

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