Core Scientific, Marathon Digital Holdings lead mining operations

Core Scientific, Marathon Digital Holdings lead mining operations in 2021

• Core Scientific now holds about 5296 BTC
• It’s mining operations in December mined over 1000BTC
• Marathon Digital Holdings now holds over 8000BTC
• Marathon mined over 3000BTC in 2021

Core Scientific has revealed that it mined over 1000BTC in December to reach an overall Bitcoin Holding of 5296 BTC. The company, which boasts a mining operation comprising of over 66000 ASIC machines, revealed in a statement on Wednesday this week. Core Scientific is one of the leading providers of mining infrastructure for BTC alongside provision of hosting solutions.

The company CEO, Mike Levitt, was ecstatic as he made the statement. He noted that the company was on a momentous growth trajectory that will see Core Scientific soar in the new year 2022. It should be noted that the production of Core Scientific in the previous year and in the last month represents over threefold increase in its production. At the time of penning this piece, the total Bitcoin holdings of Core Scientific was well over $230 million.

In the statement, Core Scientific also revealed that it would be expanding its mining operation. At the moment, the company has a total of 67000 BTC mining rigs which it will be increasing to over 100, 000 rigs in the new year. The current hash rate capacity of the 67000 mining rigs is 6.6 exahashes per second(EH/s).

Apart from its mining operations, Core Scientific also revealed that it hosts services for over 80,000 third party miners with a combined of 6.9 exahashes per second(EH/s). The company provides infrastructural, operational and technological support for its third party mining platoon. Additionally the company revealed that it has already secured agreements with its clientele to increase its mining power with an additional 430 megawatts in 2022.

Plans are underway to have Core Scientific merge with Power & Digital Infrastructure Acquisition Corp (XPDI). The company announce in July 2021 that it would be going public through a merger with XPDI, a special purpose acquisition company. The new company would still operate as Core Scientific with a combined value of $4.3 billion and remain listed publicly on the Nasdaq Exchange. However, XPDI shareholders are yet to vote for the merge, with a virtual special meeting slated for January 19 2022.

Core Scientific is not the only mining operation that reported stellar performance in 2021, Marathon Digital holdings comes hot on the hills of Core Scientific with over 3000 BTC mined in 2021 alone. This is a staggering performing from only 338 BTC during the pandemic year 2020. This is directly attributed to its purchase of over 10000 mining machines that it received from Bitmain in December. This saw Marathon Digital holdings record a more than 140% more bitcoin production in December compared to November.

This brings the total Bitcoin holdings for Marathon at 8133 BTC, the equivalent of over $350 million. It should be noted that Marathon had only mined about 338 BTC the previous year, and this represents an over eight hundred fold increase in the year 2021.

Marathon Digital Holdings CEO, Fred Thiel was enthusiastic as he made the statement. He reported that the company produced over 480BTC in its December mining operations, while averaging over a 1000BTC for the quarter ending December 2021. This however is still low compared to that of Core Scientific. Marathon CEO noted that the year was quite transformative with the total hash rate increasing more that 1,700%.

Marathon has been steadily increasing its mining machines and has already made new agreements with Compute North to increase its miners from the current 32350 mining rigs to 100, 000 mining machines. This means that the company will be competing head to head with Core Scientific whose current mining rigs sum up to 67000 active machines.

During the year, Marathon was able to increase its hash rate from just 0.2 EH/s in January 2021 to 3.5 EH/s by the close of the year in December 2021. In December, Marathon also announced plans to make an additional purchase of about 78000 bitcoin mining machines worth well over $870 million. When the purchase is finalized, the total hash rate will jump from 3.5 EH/s up to 23 EH/s by year end. Bitmain, the supplier of the mining rigs, will supply 13000 machines between July and December later in the year.

Well, seems like Core Scientific and Marathon Digital Holdings are the guys to watch these year. Remember that already over 90% of BTC has already been mined. It is possible that the combined mining operations of both large miners and small miners might see the remaining 10% been mined by the end of the year. Even more surprising, it is possible that the remaining unmined Bitcoin might be mined by mid 2022.

This means that demand for other cryptocurrencies will rise as we exhaust of Bitcoin. At the zenith, it is possible that Bitcoin might no longer be transactional and would stabilize over time and lose its volatility just like Gold. Other budding cryptos like Solano, Cardano’s ADA, Ethereum will also drive demand once we have mined all of the remaining Bitcoin. It is good news for Bitcoin to be exhaustively mined so that it occupies its rightful place as a store of value in the cryptocurrency space.

What do you think? Shall we exhaust all of the remaining BTC this year? Will the crypto world see the other budding cryptos rise steadily in value? Will Bitcoin transition as a store of value by the close of the year? It all remains to be seen. Talk to us through our social media pages.