Marathon Patent Group, a North American bitcoin mining company, has announced the purchase of 70,000 Antminer S19 ASIC miners from Bitmain. The deal amounted to $ 170 million.
Marathon Chairman and CEO Merrick Okamoto said the deal was the largest single dollar order Bitmain has ever received in its history. In addition, the equipment ordered is three times larger than the existing arsenal of Marathon.
The first batch of 7,000 Antminer S-19 Marathon will receive in July 2021, and the last in December of the same year. Okamoto said that after installing these miners, the company will have 103,000 devices for mining cryptocurrencies at its disposal. The total hash rate generated by these miners will reach 10.36 Eh / s.
Marathon started mining bitcoin in Quebec in early 2018. Initially, the company had 1,400 miners at its disposal. In August 2020, Marathon entered into an agreement with Bitmain to purchase 10,500 Antminer S19 Pro miners for $ 23 million, and in October the company acquired another 10,000 ASIC miners. Marathon has a total hash rate of 2.56 Eh / s, making the firm one of the 15 largest mining groups in the world.
Recall that six months ago, Bitmain had difficulties with sending already paid equipment from a factory in Shenzhen. These issues stemmed from litigation between Bitmain co-founders Micree Zhan and Jihan Wu over running the company. However, it recently became known that against the background of increased demand for ASICs, the founders of Bitmain rushed to resolve their conflict.
