Bitcoin production soars
NASDAQ-listed U.S. crypto asset (virtual currency) mining company Marathon Digital Holdings (Marathon) announced on the 2nd that the production volume (mining volume) of Bitcoin (BTC) in May 2023 and Reported business updates.
In May, 1,245 Bitcoins were mined, an increase of 77% compared to the previous month, and a 366% increase compared to the same month of 2022. Since the beginning of the year, it has mined 4,141 BTC.
The running hash rate also increased by 9% to 15.2 EH/s (exahash per second). Note that 1EH/s is the ability to perform 100 quadrillion hash calculations per second.
What is hash rate
Mining mining speed. In Japanese, it is expressed as “mining speed”. The unit is “hash/s”. “s” stands for “second” and represents “how many calculations can be done per second”. It is used as an index to show the processing power of mining equipment and how fast cryptocurrency mining is performed.
▶️Cryptocurrency Glossary
The rise of “Ordinals” is also a background
Marathon CEO Fred Thiel explained that the strong performance was due to an increase in hashrate and a significant increase in transaction fees.
With the arrival of “Ordinals,” bitcoin transaction fees in May increased significantly, making them expensive. We were able to benefit from this opportunity by improving the size of our business and our uptime during the month.
Transaction fees this high are rare in the past, but we think events like this could bode well for the future of the cryptocurrency mining industry.
Ordinals is a project that was released on January 21 and is also known as the Bitcoin version of NFT (non-fungible token).
Strictly speaking, it is not an NFT, but a “digital artifact (processed product)”. A serial number is assigned to each satoshi, which is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, and data such as videos and images are stored on the blockchain for each satoshi. It is a mechanism to save on.
Major NFT operators such as Yuga Labs and Magic Eden have already started handling it, and the demand for Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin using the Ordinal protocol has surged. As a result, transaction fees are also rising.
connection: Magic Eden expands in the Bitcoin version NFT “Ordinals” market
Adding more mining machines
The increase in Marathon hashrate is due to the company adding more mining machines. In May, about 10,000 new mining machines were launched at a facility in North Dakota. As of June 1, the number of machines in operation has increased to about 130,000.
Thiel explained that the unique software that controls the mining machine’s output and operating time also contributes to the increase in hash rate. If all goes well, he said, “we are on track to reach our target of 23 EH/s in the middle of this year.”
Marathon sold 554 BTC during May. We will continue to sell some of our Bitcoin holdings for operational support, financial management, and general corporate purposes. As of June 1, the company holds a total of 12,259 BTC.
In collaboration with Brink, which supports Bitcoin development, Marathon is also developing a campaign to collect up to about 140 million yen ($1 million) for Bitcoin core developers.
Marathon has announced that it will donate up to about 70 million yen ($500,000) to the fund by 2023.
