Marathon boosts bitcoin production in May by 77% to a record 1,245 BTC

The mining company Marathon Digital Holdings mined 1,245 BTC in May. This is up 77% from April and more than half of the figure for the entire first quarter.

$MARA‘s May Production Update is here:

— Produced a Record 1,245 BTC in May 2023 and 4,141 BTC Year-To-Date
— Increased Operational Hash Rate 9% to 15.2 EH/s and Installed Hash Rate 13% to 20.1 EH/s in May 2023
— Raised nearly $800,000 for #Bitcoin Core Developers in… pic.twitter.com/DrRR9R8N4X

— Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) (@MarathonDH) June 2, 2023

The growth in production is linked to the increase in hash rate and transaction fees, explained Marathon’s CEO Fred Thiel. The popularity of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens has led to fees that in some cases exceeded the block reward of 6.25 BTC. As a result, the share of fees in the total amount of bitcoin mined by the company for the month reached 11.8%, he noted.

During May, the company increased the operational hash rate by 9% to 15.2 EH/s. The installed compute power stood at 20.1 EH/s. The figure includes equipment taken offline for maintenance, repair, or other reasons.

Over the course of the month, the company continued relocating and commissioning new devices at facilities in North Dakota, USA. By the end of May Marathon’s fleet stood at approximately 133,600 ASIC miners.

It is expected that after deploying all the acquired equipment about 66% of the company’s hash rate will be generated by Antminer S19 XP. They are roughly 30% more energy-efficient than the previous generation installations.

During May Marathon sold 554 BTC. The company’s cryptocurrency reserves reached 12,259 BTC. The aggregate amount of cash and cash equivalents on the company’s balance sheet at month-end stood at $97.3 million.

On May 18, Marathon, together with the nonprofit Brink, launched an initiative to raise $1 million to support Bitcoin Core developers. According to the pledge, the company donated $500,000 on May 22. In these four days, another $300,000 was raised, Thiel said.

“We are incredibly grateful to the Bitcoin community for rallying around this initiative to help volunteers who support the open-source protocol we all depend on. We urge every Bitcoiner and crypto company to support Bitcoin Core developers and join us to close the gap to the $1 million goal,” said Marathon’s CEO.

The company announced the creation of a large-scale mining operation in Abu Dhabi in partnership with Zero Two.