30s Summary

Bitcoin miners Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms had their biggest haul in a month since the last Bitcoin ‘halving’. In October, Marathon created 717 Bitcoins ($48.8 million) by increasing its hashrate over 14%. Riot mined 505 Bitcoin ($34.4 million), which was a 23% increase from September, by upping their hashrate with new MicroBT miners. However, shares for both companies dipped on Nov. 4. Riot plans to reach a hashrate of 100 exahashes per second by 2027 and Marathon aims for 50 exahashes per second before 2025.

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In the world of Bitcoin mining, two big players, Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms, just made their biggest Bitcoin haul in a month since the last Bitcoin “halving” in April. For reference, a Bitcoin halving is when the rewards for mining Bitcoin are cut in half.

In October, Marathon managed to create 717 Bitcoins, worth around $48.8 million. What’s quite cool about this is, a good part of that success is thanks to the company increasing its ‘hashrate’ (how fast it can calculate stuff and mine Bitcoin) by over 14% to more than 40 exahashes per second, according to their CEO Fred Thiel.

Also, transaction fees were a bit higher in October, which helped Marathon’s Bitcoin tally. All up, Marathon made about 5% of all the Bitcoin created in October, said Thiel. Their mining pool, MARAPool, and private mempool, Slipstream, even bagged the company a sweet $400,000 worth of Bitcoin from just two transactions.

All this, even though they had a bit of a struggle with fewer block wins because the network difficulty went up.

Just like Marathon, Riot also had a solid October, mining 505 Bitcoin, worth about $34.4 million — a nearly 23% increase from September. According to Riot, the increase is thanks to them cranking up their hashrate to 29.4 exahashes per second with the help of new MicroBT miners at their facility in Texas.

Interestingly, though, despite the good news, both Marathon’s and Riot’s shares dipped on Nov. 4, going down 3.79% and 4.87%, according to Google Finance data.

Looking forward, Riot has its sights set on a hashrate of 34.9 exahashes per second by the end of 2024 and a whopping 100 exahashes per second by 2027. Riot is hoping to achieve this by purchasing more MicroBTs in the future.

Riot’s hashrate goal did drop slightly from what they initially aimed for, because of some hiccups with expanding their newly bought facilities in Kentucky. Meanwhile, Marathon’s keeping their eyes on the prize, aiming for a hashrate of 50 exahashes per second before 2025.