The largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner by market value, Marathon Digital, announced late on June 26 that it has expanded into altcoin mining to diversify its revenue streams following Bitcoin’s latest halving event. Marathon revealed that the altcoin project is Kaspa, and in September 2023, it used miners with application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) for the initial step.
Mining Company’s Notable Move
Marathon announced that it purchased approximately 60 PH/s Antminer KS3, KS5, and KS5 Pro ASIC from the manufacturer. Bitmain claims that each can generate up to a 95% profit margin, considering the current network difficulty rate and KAS price. Half of the Kaspa hash rate is currently operating at the company’s Texas facilities, with the remainder expected to be operational in the third quarter. As of June 25, Marathon announced that it had mined 93 million KAS tokens worth approximately $15 million.
In contrast, Marathon mined $176 million worth of Bitcoin in the first quarter of this year, and according to the firm, it held 17,857 Bitcoin worth $1.1 billion as of May 31. According to Bitcoin Treasury data, Marathon holds the largest public miner holding and the second-largest corporate holding overall, following MicroStrategy’s 226,331 Bitcoin valued at $13.8 billion.
Details About Kaspa
The lesser-known Kaspa, according to CoinGecko data, is currently the fifth-largest proof-of-work supported cryptocurrency, following Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. Accordingly, Kaspa has a market value of $4.2 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $128 million. According to Marathon, Kaspa’s circulating supply is approximately 24 billion KAS, with a current block reward of 103.83 KAS and a total supply of 28.7 billion KAS.
Kaspa also differs from Bitcoin by using the proof-of-work consensus mechanism while employing BlockDAG, which allows multiple blocks to be produced simultaneously. Marathon stated that Kaspa processes one block per second, whereas Bitcoin processes one block every 10 minutes on average, allowing Kaspa miners to earn more block rewards within a given time frame. Marathon’s Chief Growth Officer Adam Swick commented:
“By mining Kaspa, we can create a revenue stream directly tied to our core competencies in crypto asset computation.”
