Marathon Digital, a prominent player in Bitcoin mining, has disclosed that it successfully mined $16 million worth of Kaspa (KAS) tokens since September, marking a strategic move towards diversification from Bitcoin.
In a statement released on June 26, Marathon Digital highlighted that this initiative has enabled them to exploit the higher profit margins achievable with Kaspa mining machines, which in some cases reach up to 95%.
Adam Swick, Marathon’s chief growth officer, explained, “By mining Kaspa, we are able to generate revenue streams diversified from Bitcoin.”
Since deploying its initial batch of Kaspa miners in September 2023, Marathon has mined a total of 93 million KAS tokens. The value of KAS tokens has soared by 420% during this period, contrasting with Bitcoin’s 135% rise.
To facilitate their Kaspa mining operations, Marathon has procured approximately 60 petahashes of KS3, KS5, and KS5 Pro ASICs, half of which are currently operational, with the remainder scheduled for installation in the third quarter.
Despite these developments, Marathon’s Vice President of Investor Relations, Robert Samuels, clarified that the company remains firmly focused on Bitcoin. “Kaspa will represent just 1% of our energy capacity once fully operational,” Samuels emphasized in a June 26 post.
Since September, Marathon has also mined 9,761 Bitcoin (BTC), amounting to $594.9 million in value, underscoring that Kaspa mining has contributed only marginally to the company’s overall mining revenues.
Following Marathon’s announcement, KAS tokens experienced a 2.4% increase, pushing its price to $0.172 and the total value of Marathon’s KAS holdings to $16 million.
According to CoinGecko data, Kaspa ranks as the fifth largest proof-of-work cryptocurrency with a market cap of $4.1 billion. The total supply of KAS tokens will be capped at 28.7 billion, with 24 billion currently in circulation.
Similar to Bitcoin, Kaspa operates as a layer-1 protocol facilitating transfers through its native token, KAS. However, Kaspa differentiates itself with a BlockDAG architecture derived from Direct Acyclic Graph, allowing for simultaneous addition of blocks to the network and achieving a rapid block rate of approximately 1 block per second. This is significantly faster than Bitcoin’s block time of around 10 minutes.
Despite its technological advancements, Kaspa currently operates on a much smaller scale compared to Bitcoin, with daily active addresses numbering around 20,000, in contrast to Bitcoin’s 700,000 to 1 million active addresses.
In conclusion, while Marathon Digital expands into Kaspa mining, its core focus remains on Bitcoin, reflecting its status as a leading player in the cryptocurrency mining industry.
Source:
Marathon Digital