Marathon Digital CEO: "Na de halving wordt het krap voor kleine miners"

The upcoming Bitcoin Halving will be a trial by fire for miners. Instead of 900 BTC, companies will only be able to mine 450 BTC per day. Thus, revenue will be abruptly halved. Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital, explains on Bloomberg how the Bitcoin event of the year will affect the industry.

First, Thiel explains that the Bitcoin ETFs probably caused a shift in the cycle: "I think the adoption of the ETFs was a big success. It attracted capital to the market and brought forward the price appreciation that we would normally have seen 3 to 6 months after the halving."

The halving, however, is less stressful for the entrepreneur. "We look forward to a halving where the stock price has gone up beforehand," he said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Still, the halving is unlikely to leave Marathon unscathed. Instead of 28, the company will only be able to mine 14 BTC per day for now. The impact on the global hash rate "remains to be seen," Thiel said.

If Bitcoin does indeed spiral downward after the halving, many a small miner could find itself on the brink of profitability. How will Marathon compensate for the falling margin? "Since December, we started buying up data centers that we used to rent. This allows us to increase the margin by removing the middleman."

In addition, Marathon's ASIC fleet is "among the most efficient in the industry," says the entrepreneur. For MARA to become unprofitable, however, Bitcoin would have to drop significantly. "The average cost of mining one Bitcoin is around US$20,000," he said.