Fred Thiel, CEO of Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital Holdings, told Cointelegraph The combination of more hashrate from miners and price protection methods is protecting Bitcoin Mining company Marathon Digital Holdings. In an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami, Thiel revealed the strategy behind Marathon's Q1 2023 figures, when the company raised its net loss from $12.9 million in Q1 2022 (per share) to $7.2 million ($0. 05 per share) this year.
Marathon is offsetting lower Bitcoin, Price increases with output. It reported a quarterly record of 2,195 BTC mined in the first three months of the year, worth more than $60 million at the time of writing. “We are now running at 14.0 [exhash/ second (EH/s)] hashrate, which is double what we had at the end of last year,” Thiel said of the 74% increase in production, claiming that Marathon should A hash rate of 23.0 EH/s was reached within the month .
Last year's crypto winter added even more pressure to bitcoin mining companies. In December, Core Scientific filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, while Greenridge received a $74 million debt restructuring lifeline from New York-based Digital Investment Group to survive the drop in bitcoin's value.
Marathon managed to reduce its debt in March amid the collapse of US banks, although the price of bitcoin also weighed on the company's quarterly results. The mining company paid off a term loan with Silvergate Bank, releasing 3,132 bitcoin held as collateral for the loan. At the time, Marathon said the move would eliminate $50 million worth of debt and reduce its annual borrowing costs by $5 million. Marathon's strategy also includes efforts to protect assets from market downturns. According to Thiel, Marathon has spent the past few years deploying the capital it raised by buying rigs at market peaks in price protection, pegging its debt to the value of bitcoin.
"As market prices have dropped, we've also dropped our prices all the way down. This means we essentially look at the latest technology first, which means our fleet will be the most energy-efficient in the industry. The average fleet across the industry is about 43, 44 joules per terahash. Our fleet has 24 joules per terahash, almost half the energy." Marathon also invests in foreign partnerships. In early May, the company announced a joint venture with digital asset infrastructure comp any Zero Two to create a large-scale bitcoin mining facility in Abu Dhabi, with a combined capacity of 250 megawatts.
Abu Dhabi was chosen because its energy market is asymmetrical, with energy capacity needed to meet demand in summer untapped in winter, Thiel said. “They don't have to take money out of government coffers to subsidize electricity because now bitcoin will subsidize it. "
