Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital is mining Kaspa (KAS)

Marathon Digital (MARA) has disclosed its mined 93 million KAS worth $15 million.
The Bitcoin miner says the operation is part of its diversification of its revenue streams.
Marathon to deploy full 60 petahash of KAS power in Q3, 2024.

Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm Marathon Digital has announced that it now mines Kaspa (KAS), a layer-1 proof-of-work (PoW) coin.

In a press release published today, Marathon Digital said the mining operations had seen the company mine 93 million KAS as of June 25. The value of the mined Kaspa tokens was around $15 million at the time.

Marathon diversifies with Kaspa (KAS) mining

According to Marathon Digital, the move to launch KAS mining is part of the company’s quest to diversify its revenue streams. Adam Swick, Marathon’s chief growth officer, said:

“By mining Kaspa, we are able to create a stream of revenue that is diversified from Bitcoin, and that is directly tied to our core competencies in digital asset compute,”

Swick commented further on the decision, noting:

“Because of our existing infrastructure, our unique relationships with hardware manufacturers, our strong balance sheet, and the expertise of our team, Marathon was uniquely positioned to mine Kaspa and to capitalize on the higher margins that exist for those who can deploy Kaspa ASICs today.

Kaspa is 5th-largest proof-of-work coin

Kaspa currently ranks as the world’s fifth-largest PoW coin by market cap with over $4.1 billion.

According to CoinMarketCap, top PoW coins above Kaspa by market cap are Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin and Bitcoin.

As of writing, the cryptocurrency ranks 28th overall by market cap and was seeing over $56 million in daily trading volume. Kaspa has a maximum supply of 28.7 billion KAS, with circulating supply currently at 24 billion KAS. The network’s block reward is currently 103.83 KAS.

While Bitcoin produces one block every 10 minutes, Kaspa’s BlockDAG mechanism allows for one block per second, which means faster transactions.

Marathon’s Kaspa mining power

Marathon first looked into Kaspa mining in May 2023, and deployed its first ASICs for the altcoin in September. Scaling of this new mining operation followed and the company has acquired 60 petahash of Kaspa ASICs.

ASIC Miner Value estimates that these machines can generate profits of up to 95% margins based on the current KAS price and network difficulty.

Marathon currently has 50% of its Kaspa mining capacity (30 petahash) in operation at the company’s facilities in Texas. Meanwhile, it expects to have the remaining capacity fully operational in Q3 2024.

The price of KAS was 9% up in 24 hours, trading around $0.175 on Wednesday at 5:13 pm ET.