Bitcoin Miner Marathon’s Quarterly Loss Narrows, Revenue Jumps

(Bloomberg) — Marathon Digital Holdings Inc.’s second-quarter loss narrowed and revenue jumped as the Bitcoin miner increased sales of the cryptocurrency in the aftermath of a rebound in prices.

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The Las Vegas-based company’s net loss narrowed to $19.13 million, or 13 cents a share, from $212.6 million, or $1.94, in the year-earlier period. Revenue more than tripled to $81.8 million, but was below the $83.45 million estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Marathon commenced a program this year to sell Bitcoin as a means of offsetting operating costs. It realized net proceeds of about $17.6 million from the sale of around 1,800 tokens in the second quarter. As of June 30, the company had nearly 150,000 mining rigs in operation and owned 12,538 Bitcoin.

Marathon has been one of the fastest growing mining companies by computing power since the industry migrated to the US after the Chinese government’s ban on crypto mining in May 2021. The miner raised hundreds of millions of dollars by selling shares and debt financing. The company said in May it has been developing Bitcoin mining facilities in Abu Dhabi while continuing to energize machines in the sites across the US, including North Dakota and Texas.

Those expansions came despite the low Bitcoin prices, soaring power costs and more competition in the industry last year. The prolonged market rout and rising electricity rates last year plummeted mining margins that had peaked at as much as 90% in the bull run in late 2021.

Miners are racing to scale up with new machines to become more efficient in part due to a Bitcoin blockchain update that is set to drastically cut mining revenue in early 2024. Called the halving, the pre-programmed event reduces Bitcoin rewards to miners by half every four years in order to limit supply of the digital asset.

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Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive process where miners use expensive specialized computers to validate records of transactions on the blockchain to get rewards in the form of the token.

Shares of Marathon have rallied more than 350% at around $15.70 this year as the price of Bitcoin rebounded. Bitcoin has jumped 80% in 2023, after tumbling 64% last year.

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