Despite Disappointing Q3 Results, Marathon Is Now the Second-Largest BTC Holder

One of the leading crypto miners – Marathon Digital Holdings – recorded a net loss of $75.4 million, or $0.65 per share, during the third quarter of the year due to decreased production and the declining price of bitcoin.

Still, the company rounded up its total stash to 11,285 BTC. Data shows that only the Michael Saylor-founded organization MicroStrategy has more bitcoin possessions.

Q3 Was a Transition Period

Fred Thiel – Marathon’s Chairman and CEO – said 2022’s Q2 was a challenging period when the firm had to rebuild some of its operations. It transitioned a considerable chunk of its facility infrastructure from Montana to Texas, where local authorities have recently opened their arms toward crypto entities.

“The third quarter of 2022 was a transition and rebuilding period at Marathon, during which we fully exited the Hardin facility in Montana and began energizing servers at new locations, most notably the 280-megawatt data center that resides behind the meter at the King Mountain wind farm in McCamey, Texas,” Thiel said.

However, the company reported rather disappointing results during Q3 due to bitcoin’s relatively low valuation (compared to its levels from the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022). The total net loss for the period was $75.4 million, or $0.65 per share.

Marathon mined 616 BTC during the third quarter and 615 BTC in October, amassing its total bitcoin holdings to 11,285 BTC. Calculated at today’s prices, the ownings equal nearly $205 million. According to CoinGecko, MicroStrategy is the only firm with more holdings than the miner, having 130,000 BTC, while Coinbase and Square are, respectively, third and fourth.

Marathon’s Exposure to Compute North

The US-based entity reported last month exposure of more than $80 million to one of its hosting providers – Compute North. The latter is part of the worst affected companies due to the crypto winter, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September.

Compute North installed and hosted over 68,000 of Marathon’s bitcoin mining machines in its wind-powered Texas facilities during the last couple of months. In a previous announcement, Marathon stated it might shift some of its infrastructure to other regions should the issues with the bankrupt firm continue to disturb its business:

“While we expect operations to continue as originally anticipated, our asset-light model provides us with the optionality to relocate our miners to other locations, should the need arise.”

In its most recent earnings call, CEO Thiel revealed that Marathon had to part with $39 million in Q3 due to an impairment charge related to Compute North’s bankruptcy.