Marathon Patent Agrees to Buy 70K ASIC Miners From Bitmain for $170M
Nasdaq-listed Marathon Patent Group (MARA), one of the largest enterprise bitcoin mining companies in North America, announced its pre-order purchase of 70,000 Antminer S-19 ASIC miners from Bitmain for $170 million, more than tripling the size of Marathon’s fleet.
“This purchase is the largest order in dollar terms as well as the single largest order for S-19 ASIC miners that Bitmain has ever received,” said Marathon Chairman and CEO Merrick Okamoto.
Marathon said it sees receiving an initial batch of 7,000 S-19 miners in July 2021 and the final shipment in December 2021.
Marathon said its mining fleet will include more than 103,000 machines after this latest order has been received and deployed with a total mining capacity of 10.36 exahashes per second (EH/s).
Shares of Marathon opened Monday trading nearly 30% higher than their Friday close, trading hands just below $14. But some gains were given back as the share price dipped roughly 5% around 15:30 UTC.
The monster order comes after a holiday weekend in which the price of bitcoin hit a succession of new all-time highs.
Update (Dec. 27,142.166usd): Updated with Marathon stock prices.
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