Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) solidified its position in July as the world's largest publicly traded bitcoin miner by self-mining hashrate, meaning computing power in its facilities that mines for its own wallets as opposed to those for clients.

In June, Marathon reported 17.7 exahash/second (EH/s) of operational computing power on the bitcoin network, also known as hashrate, outpacing the formerly largest public miner Core Scientific (CORZ), which had 15 EH/s of mining machines installed. Now in July, Marathon has reported a hashrate of 18.8 (EH/s), while Core Scientific has been bogged down in bankruptcy proceedings since December 2022. Core's self-mining hashrate has remained largely unchanged since the month prior to its Chapter 11 filing.

Putting last year's bad weather and operational delays behind it, Marathon has been plugging in machines at a rapid pace in 2023, almost tripling its operational hashrate to hit the 15 EH/s mark in May. Marathon's stock price is up 360% in 2023, according to TradingView data, with the price of bitcoin rising about 76% year to date.

Other bitcoin miners are also racing to plug in the newest machines in advance of the bitcoin halving, an event coded into bitcoin's fundamentals in which the rewards that miners get for successfully mining a bitcoin block are cut in half. The next halving is estimated to occur some time in April 2024.

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Eliza Gkritsi

Eliza Gkritsi is a CoinDesk contributor focused on the intersection of crypto and AI, having previously covered mining for two years. She previously worked at TechNode in Shanghai and has graduated from the London School of Economics, Fudan University, and the University of York. She owns 25 WLD. She tweets as @egreechee.