Nasdaq-listed Marathon Digital Holdings, one of the biggest Bitcoin mining companies in North America, has announced a deal to buy an additional 30,000 mining machines from Bitmain to boost its mining capacity.

Fast facts

  • Marathon has entered into a contract with Bitmain to purchase 30,000 Antminer S19j Pros worth a total of US$120.7 million, the company said in a statement on Monday.
  • The new machines are expected to ship from Bitmain between next January and June. Once all are in place, Marathon will be operating more than 133,000 Bitcoin mining machines in total, which could boost the company’s hashrate to about 12% of the Bitcoin network’s total if all machines are deployed, according to the statement.
  • “Increasing our percentage of the total network’s hashrate increases our probability of earning Bitcoin, and given the uniquely favorable conditions in the current mining environment, we believe it is an opportune time to add new miners to our operations,” Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said in the statement.
  • The global Bitcoin hashrate is on an uptrend as miners pushed out by China resettle on friendlier shores and resume investing big money in mining equipment.