Marathon Eyes $1.5B Offering after Raising $750M
Top three miners have raised $1.6b since October via stock offerings
Bitcoin is not the only thing that is rallying – so are stock offerings by publicly traded mining companies.
Riot said over the past week that it received $115 million in Q1 so far after raising more than $500 million in equity in Q4.
On Wednesday, Marathon provided its annual report for 2023 and said that as of Dec. 31, it had raised $248.1 million from its 2023 at-the-market (ATM) offering program since October, which had a cap of $750 million.
After Dec. 31, Marathon sold additional shares under the 2023 ATM to reach the maximum limit, implying that it has raised an additional $500 million year-to-date.
Marathon added that it plans to start a new ATM offering program in February with another maximum offering of $1.5 billion.
All told, the top three bitcoin mining stocks by market capitalization – Marathon, Riot, and CleanSpark – raised $880 million in Q4 and $739 million in the first two months of 2024. Others like HIVE and Iris Energy also continued to raise additional funds since the New Year, as noted in the previous issue.
A majority of the raised funds by these major public mining companies will be used to pay for miner commitments and infrastructure buildout during 2024 and 2025.
CleanSpark doubled down on its preorders of Bitmain’s Antminer S21s in early January. Riot made another purchase of MicroBT’s WhatsMiners this week to replace and upgrade its existing fleet.
It appears that Riot aims to switch gears toward MicroBT’s products as some of its existing Antminers have been causing issues.
Marathon recently closed the acquisition of two sites from Generate Capital to become more vertically integrated, dropping the asset-light model that it boasted during the last cycle.
Marathon has not yet made any significant miner purchases from Bitmain or MicroBT. However, in September, it paid $15 million to its portfolio company Auradine to secure certain rights to future purchases of Auradine’s bitcoin ASIC miners. It’d be interesting to see how that will play out this year and whether Auradine will rise as a serious rival to Bitmain and MicroBT.
Regulation News
Riot, TBC Seek Court Injunction on Bitcoin Mining Survey - TheMinerMag
EIA to Temporarily Suspend Bitcoin Miner Survey after Lawsuit - Reuters
Hardware and Infrastructure News
Hut 8 Taps into Bitcoin Reserves for New 62MW Site Buildout - TheMinerMag
CleanSpark Exceeds 15 EH/s, Completes Acquisition of Mississippi Sites - Link
Riot Purchases 31,500 WhatsMiners to Enhance and Expand Rockdale Hashrate - Link
Riot Raises $559M in Equity to Fund WhatsMiner Purchases - TheMinerMag
Corporate News
Marathon Launches 'Slipstream' Service to Streamline Confirmations of Large or Non-standard Bitcoin Transactions - Link
Mawson Denies RSUs to Former CEO, Citing Disclosure Failure - TheMinerMag
Feature
[Podcast] Mining Bitcoin in Mexico With Santiago Varela - The Mining Pod