Marathon Digital Mines $16M in Kaspa to Diversify from Bitcoin

Marathon Digital, a prominent Bitcoin mining company, has mined $16 million worth of Kaspa (KAS) since September, aiming to diversify its revenue stream beyond Bitcoin. Kaspa, a token designed to address Bitcoin’s scalability issues, offers higher mining margins.

Key Points

– Diversification Move: Marathon Digital announced on June 26 that it has mined $16 million in Kaspa, capitalizing on the higher margins possible with Kaspa mining machines, which can reach up to 95%.
– Higher Margins with Kaspa: Adam Swick, Marathon’s Chief Growth Officer, highlighted that Kaspa mining provides a diversified revenue stream from Bitcoin, leveraging Marathon’s position to benefit from Kaspa ASICs.
– Significant KAS Mining: Since deploying its first batch of Kaspa miners in September 2023, Marathon has mined 93 million KAS tokens. During this period, KAS tokens surged 420%, while Bitcoin increased by 135%.

Equipment and Operations

Marathon has acquired approximately 60 petahashes of KS3, KS5, and KS5 Pro ASICs for Kaspa mining. Currently, half of this capacity is operational, with the remaining set to be installed in the third quarter.

Focus on Bitcoin Remains

Despite this diversification, Marathon’s Vice President of Investor Relations, Robert Samuels, emphasized that Bitcoin remains the company’s primary focus. Kaspa mining will only represent 1% of Marathon’s energy capacity once fully deployed.

– Marathon’s Bitcoin Mining: Since September, Marathon has mined 9,761 Bitcoin, worth $594.9 million, indicating that Kaspa mining is a minor part of the firm’s total revenue.

Market Reaction and Future Prospects

Following Marathon’s announcement, KAS tokens rallied 2.4%, with its price reaching $0.172 and Marathon’s total KAS stack valued at $16 million. Kaspa is currently the fifth-largest proof-of-work cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $4.1 billion.

Kaspa’s Unique Technology

Kaspa utilizes a Direct Acyclic Graph-derived architecture, “BlockDAG,” allowing blocks to be added simultaneously rather than linearly. This results in a block rate of approximately one block per second, significantly faster than Bitcoin’s 10-minute block time.

– Current Network Activity: While Kaspa shows promise, it is not yet a Bitcoin competitor. Bitcoin sees 700,000 to 1 million unique active addresses daily, whereas Kaspa averages around 20,000.