What is Marathon Digital?

The Bitcoin bull run of 2020/2021 was notable because it brought cryptocurrencies to the attention of many mainstream companies and institutions. Firms, including PayPal, Mastercard, and Microstrategy, all began to include digital assets in their corporate strategies around this time.

Marathon Digital is another example – an established publicly traded company that made a strategic pivot into Bitcoin mining and has since become the largest miner by market capitalization.

History of Marathon Digital

Marathon Digital was established in 2010 under its original name, Marathon Patent Group, and became publicly traded in 2011. From 2010 until 2021, the company was only involved in the business of procuring patents for sales and licensing purposes as a non-practicing entity – a practice also known as “patent trolling” by skeptics.

In early 2021, as crypto was in the midst of a bull run, Marathon undertook a radical pivot when the company began procuring mining equipment from ASIC manufacturer Bitmain. It also invested over $150 million in Bitcoin, acquiring over 4,800 BTC. At the time, the company stated that it wanted to become the “de facto choice” for investors seeking exposure to Bitcoin. As such, the company changed its name to Marathon Digital Holdings in March 2021.

In April 2021, Fred Thiel took over as CEO. Thiel had formerly served on the board of directors of Marathon since 2018 and as head of Thiel Advisors, a consulting firm, since 2013.

In August 2024, the company announced a plan to sell $250 million in convertible notes in a private sale to fund future Bitcoin purchases. The notes will be convertible to cash, Marathon common stock, or a combination.

Marathon Digital is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and operates in multiple countries.

Marathon Digital Services

Since moving into Bitcoin mining in 2021, Marathon Digital has undergone rapid expansion in both its core mining business and in several other related ventures.

Bitcoin Mining & Computing Services

As of 2024, Marathon operates a global network of 13 data centers that are predominantly intended for powering the company’s 265,000 Bitcoin miners. At full capacity, Marathon Digital can account for over 5% of the total Bitcoin network hash power. Marathon’s data center strategy combines self-owned and jointly-owned sites with third-party hosted operations.

As a way of offsetting the high energy consumption required for Bitcoin mining, Marathon Digital puts energy at the core of its operational strategy. While renewables are more environmentally friendly, the volatile nature of energy generation creates challenges with storage.

Marathon Digital’s data centers contribute to a more stable energy supply by utilizing over-production in Bitcoin mining activities and recycling heat generated by mining back into the energy grid. It also aims to make use of “unconventional” energy sources such as landfill sites or byproducts from food processing.

Following the 2024 Bitcoin halving and a subsequent rise in mining difficulty, miner revenues were significantly impacted. In August 2024, Marathon Digital hired AI specialists to its board, indicating that it may broaden its strategy into AI compute to mitigate the impact of Bitcoin volatility.

2PIC by Mara

2PIC by Mara is an immersion cooling system for data center hardware. It reduces space requirements compared to existing cooling systems while enabling more power output in the same space. It also offers up to 60% improvements in energy efficiency.

MARAFW

MARAFW is firmware for mining rigs aimed at enhancing performance and versatility. It enables miners to increase their hash rate while remaining efficient. Marathon also produces a control board for mining rigs that comes pre-loaded with MARAFW.

Slipstream

Slipstream is a service for making non-standard or complex Bitcoin transactions easier. Miners will generally tend to exclude such transactions from blocks in favor of smaller, easier ones that allow for faster processing and confirmation.

Marathon uses its own mining pool, allowing anyone wanting to execute such a transaction to request it from the company directly via Slipstream, without having to wait for selection in a general mempool.

Anduro and Alys

Anduro is a multi-sidechain platform for the Bitcoin blockchain, where sidechains are secured by merge-mining their native assets together with BTC. As such, Anduro aims to offer an application layer for the Bitcoin blockchain where the incentives are inherently complementary to participation in the Bitcoin network.

Alys is an Ethereum-compatible side chain built on Anduro. It targets use cases such as institutional tokenization of assets leveraging the reputation, longevity, and security of the underlying Bitcoin blockchain.

Marathon Digital essentials

• Marathon Digital is publicly traded digital asset company primarily focused on Bitcoin mining operations.
• The company operates a global network of data centers that account for around 5% of the total Bitcoin network hashpower.
• Marathon Digital also develops technologies, including mining hardware and blockchain software, that support the Bitcoin ecosystem.