Marathon Digital bitcoin production nearly doubles to 360 in September

Marathon Digital (NASDAQ:MARA) mined 360 bitcoins (BTC-USD) in September, improving from 184 in August, as the company successfully transitioned out of its data center in Hardin, Montana and started scaling operations at new facilities, it said Thursday. During Q3, the miner's exit from its Hardin facility and scaling of operations at its King Mountain wind farm in Texas among other new locations has resulted in ~19K more miners coming online within the next 30 days, said Marathon CEO and Chairman Fred Thiel. That represents an additional ~2.0 exahashes per second of mining capacity. Its operating mining fleet consisted of approximately 57K active miners as of October 5, producing ~5.7 EH/s, after ~19K additional miners were energized subsequent to the end of Q3. Bitcoin (BTC-USD) holdings totaled 10,670 with a fair market value of ~$207.3M as of September 30. Furthermore, Compute North, one of Marathon's (MARA) hosting partners, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 22. But that won't impact MARA's ability to achieve its 2023 target of 23 exahashes, Thiel said. "While we expect operations to continue as originally anticipated, our asset light model provides us with the optionality to relocate our miners to other locations, should the need arise," he added. SA contributor Mike Fay justified Marathon Digital with a Sell rating as it has a big debt load and weaker production than mining peers.