MARA Hits Record-High Bitcoin Production in May

Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings, formerly Marathon Digital, set a new monthly record in May, producing 950 Bitcoin, a 35% increase from April.

The BTC miner said it won 282 blocks, marking a 38% month-over-month increase, and grew its energized hashrate to 58.3 exahash per second.

MARA’s big month occurred as Bitcoin hit a record high above $112,000, part of a wider upturn in crypto markets stemming from improved environment for risk-on assets. Bitcoin was recently trading above $106,000, up 2% over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin miners use powerful computers to solve complex math problems that validate transactions on the Bitcoin network. To say that a miner “won” a block means it beat the others to the right answer. A company’s mining power is measured in exahashes, which represent one quintillion guesses at the right answer every second.

Miners are rewarded with new Bitcoin and transaction fees for helping secure the network and add new blocks to the blockchain, which is why MARA’s increased win rate helped it set a new BTC production record.

The company noted that some of this is down to pure luck.

“Production in May also benefitted from block reward luck. Since launch, MARA Pool’s block reward luck has outperformed the network average by over 10%, contributing to our industry-leading block production,” MARA Holdings CEO Fred Thiel said in a press release.

MARA Holdings has now grown its Bitcoin treasury to 49,228 BTC worth approximately $5.3 billion at the time of writing. The company noted in its press release that didn’t sell any Bitcoin in May.

The value of the company’s Bitcoin holdings is now level with its $5.3 billion market capitalization. The company didn’t immediately respond to a question from Decrypt about this point.

It’s likely a welcome turnaround from when its market cap trailed its Bitcoin holdings in April.

Investors seem pleased with the news. MARA, which trades on the Nasdaq under the MARA ticker, has gained 5.6% since the opening bell and is currently trading for $15.15. Just last week, the company was touting on X that instead of just buying Bitcoin, its “twin turbo strategy” includes buying, producing, and compounding BTC.

MARA’s next largest publicly traded competitor, Riot Platforms, posted a smaller gain in May. Riot, which trades on the Nasdaq under the RIOT ticker, saw BTC production rise 11% to 514 in May. But unlike its rival, RIOT sold 500 Bitcoin in the same month.

In his commentary on May performance, Riot Platforms CEO Jason Les said the company closed on the acquisition of 355 acres near its existing Corsicana site in Texas.

“This additional land will further support the development of data centers to serve high performance compute, which typically require larger footprints than bitcoin mining to utilize the same power capacity,” he said.

Edited by James Rubin