MARA Bitcoin Production Slides 25% as Mining Environment Toughens

MARA Holdings’ Bitcoin mining production slid 25% in June as the firm faced poor weather conditions at a Texas facility and ongoing challenges that have made mining more difficult industry-wide, its June report shows. 

The Florida-based company produced 713 Bitcoin in June, or 237 fewer tokens than it did in May. Similarly, the Bitcoin miner won just 211 blocks last month, or 25% less than its record-high 282 blocks won in May.

The company held a total of 49,940 BTC worth more than $5 billion as of June 30, according to its statement. 

MARA attributed the mining production dips to weather and the heightened requirements to mine Bitcoin on its native blockchain. 

“The decrease was primarily due to reduced uptime from weather-related curtailment and the temporary deployment of older machines in Garden City while storm-related damage was being remediated,” MARA CEO Fred Thiel said Tuesday in a statement. “Natural variability in block luck – an expected dynamic when operating our own mining pool – also contributed.” 

But the firm also said that it would increase its network capacity by 40% to 75 exahashes by year’s end. “This goal aligns with both our rapid expansion and commitment to low-cost power with efficient capital deployment,” Thiel said.

Exahashes are a measure of a mining network’s computational power and security.

Bitcoin mining is a process by which miners solve complex cryptographic puzzles to add transaction blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain, receiving tokens in exchange for their efforts to secure the network. The process’ difficulty jumped roughly 2.6% to 126.4 terahashes between April 30 and June 17, according to cryptocurrency-mining calculator CoinWarz’ data. 

MARA closed at 15.70, up 0.1%, according to Yahoo Finance data. 

Bitcoin was recently trading at $105,862, down 0.2% from Monday, same time, according to crypto markets data provider CoinGecko. 

June’s results come amid a broader decline in its mining success over the past few months, although MARA logged a 38% month-over-month increase in its block production in May. 

The dropoff in MARA’s Bitcoin mining production also comes as the company plans to double down on its strategies to bolster its holdings of the token. To that end, MARA announced in March it would debut a $2 billion stock offering to add more of the tokens to its balance sheet. 

The miner is one of several publicly traded companies that has pursued an aggressive Bitcoin acquisition spree similar to Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, which pivoted its focus from software development to Bitcoin accumulation in 2020. More than 140 companies hold Bitcoin as of publication time, bitcointreasuries.net data shows.  

Edited by James Rubin