Who’s Mining the Most Bitcoin in Last Pre-Halving Month?
Core Scientific leads, while Marathon slowly recovers from February downtime
Bitcoin’s halving is expected to happen on April 20, about three weeks from now. That also means March 2024 was the last full month of the epoch when 6.25 BTC were issued per block approximately every ten minutes. As expected, mining participants have been ramping up their hashrate as much as possible, as evidenced by bitcoin’s soaring mining difficulty over the past few months.
While public mining companies are yet to publish their March updates, the graph below from TheMinerMag estimates their production based on a few other metrics.
First, bitcoin’s average daily production benchmark for March declined to 1.6 BTC/EH/s due to the 5.8% difficulty jump on March 14. Luckily, bitcoin’s mining difficulty decreased by about 1% on Thursday, which means the hashrate has been relatively flat over the past two weeks.
Based on a company’s installed hashrate at the end of February and its average hashrate realization rate over the past three months, it is possible to project its realized hashrate for March. Multiplying that by the month’s daily benchmark could hence help estimate a company’s March production.
However, the Marathon data is based on the blocks mined by Marathon’s MARA Pool month-to-date as of March 27 and the Core Scientific data is based on its daily updates on X (formerly Twitter).
Per the chart’s estimation, Core Scientific remains the largest public mining firm by proprietary bitcoin production in March. It took over that position from Marathon in February when its competitor faced major downtime due to power issues at one of its hosted sites.
Marathon appears to have somewhat improved the issues over the last two months but is yet to be as operational as it was in December 2023 when it achieved a realized hashrate of 25 EH/s. That number declined to 18 EH/s and 17 EH/s in January and February, respectively, despite that Marathon had installed over 25 EH/s of bitcoin miners. Downtime is probably the last thing a mining company would want to experience in the last months of the current 6.25 BTC block reward epoch.
Regulation News
$6.9M in stolen Bitcoin mining computers recovered in Southern California - KTLA
Iceland to harvest more corn and less bitcoin, says PM - Financial Times
Hardware and Infrastructure News
Marathon Releases Bitcoin Mining Firmware and Control Board - Link
Bitdeer to Expand 3.4 EH/s with Self-Designed Bitcoin Miners - TheMinerMag
Marathon Unveils Two-Phase Immersion Cooling System - Link
Mawson Expands Hosted Bitcoin Hashrate for CTG to 3.4 EH/s - TheMinerMag
Corporate News
Bitcoin miner's $640m megadeal stumbles as Texans sour on industry's promise of jobs and growth - DLNews
Bitfarms Announces CEO Transition - Link
Bitdeer leaders again meet with Massillon City Council on site revisit - Massillon Independent
Bitcoin block art? Marathon showcases visualization potential of block building - Cointelegraph
Crypto miner, Pennsylvania hit with lawsuit over pollution from bitcoin mine - Reuters
Financial News
Bitcoin Miner Arkon Energy Plans Backdoor Listing in Europe - TheMinerMag
Crypto Miner Bitdeer in Talks With Private Credit for Capital - Bloomberg
Feature
We Regret To Inform You The Cats Have Caused Bitcoin MEV - The Mining Pod
Bitcoin miner consolidation appears imminent as halving looms - Blockworks
Bitcoin 'Halving' Spurs Exodus of Old US Mining Computers Abroad - Bloomberg
Core Scientific CEO: Machine buys, deleveraging key around Bitcoin halving - Blockworks
Texan bitcoiners start mining in Argentina, where peso is in freefall - CNBC
ZK Rollups For Bitcoin Miners - The Mining Pod