Nevada-headquartered Marathon Patent Group is one such mining firm which is trying to cement its position as a prominent Bitcoin miner.
The company has stated that it had entered into what is perceived as the largest mining rig order in the US. As per a media release, Marathon Patent Group detailed that it had already placed an order for buying 70,000 Ant miner S-19 ASICs from Bitmain, which is China headquartered mining equipment manufacturer.
The latest purchase will pave way for an increase in Marathon’s operating capacity to 103,000 miners. Furthermore, the company’s output hash rate to 10.36 EH/s.
Bitmain will start delivering in 2021, with the initial lot of 7,000 mining rigs scheduled to arrive in July. By December next year, the order is expected to be fulfilled.
Merrick Okamoto, CEO of Marathon, pointed out Bitmain has received its largest ever order worth $170 million. It is new landmark for the Chinese enterprise in terms of order value and also quantity. Okamoto further said:
“We appreciate the hard work their team is putting in to fulfil this order… Our relationship with Bitmain is an important component of our potential for future success, and we look forward to continuing working with them to scale our business.”
Since the beginning of this year, Marathon has been buying mining equipment consistently. Back in October, the company revealed a purchase of 10,500 S19 Pro rigs to boost its capacity. Before placing the order, Marathon was operating only with 2,560 rigs.
However, the firm had disclosed its plan to boost its hash power to 2.56 EH/s by July next year. That would make Marathon command 2% of worldwide Bitcoin hash power. Currently, the company is on course to surpass the estimate.
The rise of Marathon has proven that it is indeed possible to run huge mining centres successfully in the US. Nevertheless, the company is not the only one to have hogged the limelight. Riot Blockchain, last week, revealed that it is acquiring another 15,000 Antminer rigs from the Chinese manufacturer Bitmain.
The Colorado based miner affirmed that its order is made up of 1,200 Antminer S19j Pro and3,000 S19 Pro mining rigs. The total cost of purchase is $35 million, with delivery and installation scheduled to take place between May and October 2021.
Riot has pointed out that the acquisition would boost its hash rate by 65%. Furthermore, Riot will have 37,000 miners, including the rigs that are yet to be delivered. A rough assessment indicates that its hash rate could surge to 3.8EH/s. Energy consumption is anticipated to increase to 120 megawatts.
San Francisco headquartered Layer 1, which started operations in 2019, is also making headlines. The firm has pointed out that it intends to contribute about 30% of China’s hash power. Unfortunately, a patent infringement case filed by tech company Lancium has affected the operations of Layer 1.