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Aoyon Ashraf is Chief Editorial Officer with over ten years of experience in equity market coverage.
Marathon Digital (MARA), one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners, sold 1,500 bitcoin in January - first time ever - to monetize the recent rally in the crypto market.
The minor declared Thursday in a communique that the decision had been taken to cover part of his expenses. "With bitcoin production increasing and becoming more consistent, we made the strategic decision to sell some of our bitcoin, as previously planned, to cover some of our operating expenses and for general corporate purposes," Marathon Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement. The company still holds approximately 11,418 bitcoin in its stock.
The move bring the miner's strategy inline with some of its peers, including Riot Platforms (RIOT), which started selling some of its mined bitcoin last year. Marathon was among few remaining miners who continued to hold onto its mined bitcoin, even after indicating that it may sell at some point. The decision probably came after Bitcoin's price rose by around 40% in January. The miner intends to continue selling a portion of his bitcoin mined this year, to finance his monthly operating expenses, according to the press release.
The miner had a hashrate of exploitation or a computing power of 11 exahash per second (eh/s) in January and plans to reach 23 eh/s by mid-2023, the declaration said. Bitcoin network's hashrate is currently around 282.55 EH/s, implying Marathon has about 4% of the global computing power.
Marathon declared that it has mined a record 687 bitcoin, which is increasing by 45% from December. 'The improvement in our production of bitcoins was primarily the result of our team's ability to work in tandem with the new mccamey hosting provider, texas, to respond to maintenance and technical problems at the King Mountain Data Center which had removed our bitcoin production in the fourth quarter of 2022," thiel said.
The shares of the miner rose on Thursday with the broader market. However, equities fell by around 4% in post-market trade as Bitcoin lost some of its momentum from the previous recovery.
