Marathon Digital Holdings, a bitcoin mining company, is thought to be the second-largest publicly traded corporation in terms of Bitcoin holdings.
According to unnamed third-party data, Marathon Digital CEO Fred Thiel said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Nov. 8 that the company currently holds 11,300 Bitcoin, worth about $205 million, “making Marathon the second largest holder of Bitcoin among publicly traded companies worldwide.”
The NASDAQ-listed cryptocurrency miner is rated second only to MicroStrategy Inc., which has approximately 130,000 total BTC, in terms of holdings, according to CoinGecko. Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, and Block Inc., a payments business created by Jack Dorsey, come after it.
On Nov. 8, the firm released its third-quarter earnings, reporting that the quarter saw 616 Bitcoin added to its holdings, with another 615 BTC added in October alone, the company’s most productive month ever.
Thiel during the conference call said,
“The consistent improvement in our Bitcoin production is the direct result of increasing our hash rates by bringing more Bitcoin servers online and improving those servers.”
The CEO of Marathon Digital also stated that up to this point, no BTC has been sold by the business. This stance will be maintained unless it is judged “necessary to cover operating expenses or other expenses.”
In contrast, other significant miners including Argo, Bitfarms, Core Scientific, and Riot Blockchain reported selling coins to pay their costs.
During the call, Thiel also brought up the “battle” between Sam Bankman-Fried and Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, which he claims is producing “turmoil” for the price of BTC but that they “feel very comfortable” in a range of $18,000 to $20,000.
Bitcoin Miner’s Earning Down In The Third Quarter
The third quarter saw a decline in the BTC miner’s profits, with its net loss nearly trebling from the same period last year to reach $75.4 million and its revenue falling by 75.5% to $12.7 billion.
The miner’s departure from its Montana plant and declining BTC prices resulted in lower BTC production in the quarter, which caused both metrics to fall short of analysts’ estimates.
After leaving Hardin and starting operations in new places, such as the Texas wind farm King Mountain, Thiel described the third quarter as a time of “transition and reconstruction.”
Rival Bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain also released third-quarter earnings on November 7 that fell short of analyst projections.
Due to “major curtailment activities” linked to its operations in Texas and a large drop in the market price of Bitcoin compared to a year ago, the company’s overall revenue fell by 28.5% in the third quarter while its net loss increased by 139.2%.
According to Google Finance, the stock prices of Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital have both fallen during the last five days, with Riot Blockchain’s shares down 17.62% and Marathon Digital’s down 18.02%.