MARA Bitcoin Mining Drops 25% as Mining Conditions Tighten
MARA Holdings' bitcoin mining output fell 25% in June as the company faced adverse weather conditions at its Texas facility and ongoing issues that have complicated the mining process in the industry as a whole, according to its June report .
The Florida-based firm mined 713 bitcoins in June, down 237 from May. The bitcoin miner also won just 211 blocks last month, down 25% from its record of 282 blocks mined in May.
According to the company, as of June 30, it had 49,940 BTC on its balance sheet, which is more than $5 billion.
MARA explained the decline in production by adverse weather conditions and increased requirements for Bitcoin mining on its own blockchain.
“The decline was primarily due to reduced uptime due to weather conditions and the temporary removal of older machines to Garden City while storm cleanup was underway,” MARA CEO Fred Thiel said Tuesday. “The unpredictability of block luck — an expected situation when running our own mining pool — also played a role.”
However, the company also said it plans to increase its network capacity by 40% to 75 exahashes by the end of the year. “This goal is consistent with both our rapid expansion and our commitment to using cheap energy with efficient capital allocation,” Thiel added.
Exahashes are a measure of the computing power and security of a mining network.
Bitcoin mining is the process by which miners solve complex cryptographic puzzles to add blocks of transactions to the Bitcoin blockchain, earning tokens as a reward for their efforts to secure the network. The difficulty of the process increased by about 2.6% to 126.4 terahashes between April 30 and June 17, according to cryptocurrency mining calculator CoinWarz.
MARA shares closed at 15.70, up 0.1%, according to Yahoo Finance.
Bitcoin recently traded at $105,862, down 0.2% from Monday, according to cryptocurrency market data provider CoinGecko.
The June results came against a backdrop of overall production declines over the past few months, although MARA recorded a 38% month-on-month increase in block production in May.
MARA's decline in bitcoin production also comes as the company is set to double down on its efforts to increase its token supply. In this regard, MARA announced in March that it would be holding a $2 billion stock offering to increase its token supply on its balance sheet.
The miner is one of several public companies that are actively buying bitcoin, like Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which shifted its focus from software development to accumulating bitcoin in 2020. According to data from bitcointreasuries.net , more than 140 companies own bitcoin at the time of publication.
Edited by James Rubin
Source: cryptonews.net
