Marathon Acquires 200MW Bitcoin Mining Center from Applied Digital for $87.3M

Marathon Digital Holdings announced on March 15 that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Applied Digital to purchase a 200 megawatt (MW) bitcoin mining facility in Texas for $87.3 million.

The agreement states that Marathon will pay the purchase price in cash from the holdings.

In a post on Marathon Digital's blog, the purchase brings the company's total BTC mining capacity to 1.1 gigawatts — the fictional “Flux Capacitor” from the backstory to the futuristic film franchise.

Marathon Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel commented.

“This transaction will increase our leverage over our current operations, reduce our on-site cost per cent by approximately 20% and provide us with an additional 100 MW of expansion capacity. […] Following the closing of this transaction and potential site expansion this year, our Bitcoin mining portfolio has approximately 1.1 gigawatts of capacity, 54% of which resides at our directly owned and operated sites, all of which are separate. Eleven locations on three continents.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, Marathon Digital had its best-performing revenue year in 2023, with revenue of $387.5 million — up 229% from last year and up 452% for the fourth quarter.

The increase in revenue is due to Bitcoin's rally at the end of 2023 and a 147% year-over-year increase in Bitcoin production for Marathon Digital.

In late February, Marathon announced a new live Bitcoin transaction submission service. The new service, called “Slipstream”, is designed to facilitate and speed up large and/or informal transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Next, mining companies like Marathon Digital will have to navigate the upcoming Bitcoin halving. This event, which occurs after a certain amount of blocks have been mined on the Bitcoin blockchain – currently, expected to happen in mid-April – could have an outsized impact on large mining firms. The reward for mining a block will decrease by 50% from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block.

Related: Bitcoin Half: Latest News, Full Coverage by Cointelegraph