Just last month, Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) announced a 25% year-on-year decrease in Bitcoin mining output for June. This drop was primarily a result of severe weather at its Texas mining site and increasing headwinds within the Bitcoin mining industry. Although this low, MARA has still mined 49,940 BTC, worth more than $5 billion as of June 30. In reaction to today’s news, the company’s stock closed at $15.70, an increase of just 0.1%, based on Yahoo Finance data.

June Mining Results

In June, Marathon Digital mined 713 Bitcoins, down 237 tokens from May. It’s a surprising pair for a relatively small company that just last month won a record 211 blocks. This decrease is in stark opposition to the 38% month-over-month increase in block production MARA saw in May.

"The decrease was primarily due to reduced uptime from weather-related curtailment and the temporary deployment of older machines in Garden City while storm-related damage was being remediated." - Fred Thiel

The company has been hit hard with losses due to challenging weather conditions. In addition, they are temporarily deploying some legacy equipment while they work to fix storm damage.

Expansion and Network Capacity

Even given the upheaval from the past weeks, Marathon Digital has reiterated its commitment to grow its network capacity. The company hopes to raise its capacity by 40% to 75 exahashes by the end of the year. This expansion plan follows on the heels of a March announcement. At the same time, the company announced a $2 billion equity offering to more than double its Bitcoin reserves.

"This goal aligns with both our rapid expansion and commitment to low-cost power with efficient capital deployment." - Fred Thiel

The company’s recently appointed CEO, Fred Thiel, emphasized the importance of this new effort. This directly reinforces their long-term strategy which is to grow fast and deploy capital efficiently.

Broader Market Context

Marathon Digital’s results in June are indicative of a larger trend that has made Bitcoin mining more difficult. Between April 30 and June 17, the Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by about 2.6% to reach a record high of 126.4 terahashes. This recent jump in difficulty is indicative of both the intensified competition as well as the computational power that has become necessary to mine Bitcoin.

As of press time, Bitcoin price was $105,862, a 0.2% decrease since Monday, per CoinGecko. MARA will need to delicately dance around these pitfalls. This new capability will play an important role in its efforts to improve its own mining efficiency and grow its Bitcoin treasury.