Marathon buys 30,000 more Bitcoin miners, targets 13.3 EH/s hashing power

Marathon Digital has announced the purchase of additional Bitcoin mining hardware from Bitmain.

According to a release issued on Monday, the United States-based Bitcoin (BTC) mining giant has completed a purchase deal for 30,000 Antminer S19j Pro at a reported cost of $120.7 million.

The news marks a continued increase of Marathon’s Bitcoin mining inventory, with Bitmain expected to complete the delivery of the new rigs by June 2022.

With the 30,000 rigs in tow, Marathon’s total Bitcoin miner count will go north of 133,000, delivering an estimated hash rate of 13.3 exahashes per second (EH/s).

To put the figure into perspective, data from BTC.com puts the top three BTC mining pools at between 13.16 EH/s and 18.67 EH/s.

At 13.3 EH/s per second, Marathon will effectively control over 12% of the current Bitcoin mining hash rate.

Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon, alluded to the benefits of such a commanding presence in the global hash rate distribution with the announcement quoting him saying:

“Increasing our percentage of the total network’s hash rate increases our probability of earning Bitcoin, and given the uniquely favorable conditions in the current mining environment, we believe it is an opportune time to add new miners to our operations.”

Related: Four North American Bitcoin miners that could benefit from the East-West shift

China’s Bitcoin mining crackdown has upended the global hash rate distribution, with North American participants expected to control a larger portion of the industry. Even before Beijing’s actions against crypto mining, American and Canadian mining giants upscaled their capacity with new inventory from the two major Bitcoin makers — Bitmain and MicroBT.

The East-to-West hash rate migration may also serve to improve the carbon footprint associated with Bitcoin mining. Marathon is among a growing list of U.S. miners reportedly committed to “green mining.”

Meanwhile, Chinese miners have reportedly begun to set up shop in Kazakhstan, with the immediate impact being an increase in the Bitcoin mining hash rate.