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Nasdaq-listed Marathon Patent Group has entered into a joint venture agreement with US independent energy producer Beowulf Energy to provide low-cost electricity for its bitcoin mining operations in the north of the country.
In a statement on Tuesday, Marathon said it will co-locate a bitcoin mining facility inside Beowulf’s Big Horn Data Hub at its 105-megawatt power plant in Hardin, Montana.
The company will pay Beowulf, which builds and operates power plants, $ 0.028 per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the facility’s electricity supply. This is 38% lower than Marathon’s total electricity cost for mining and operating data centers, currently at $ 0.034 / kWh.
Marathon said reducing energy costs will also reduce the break-even costs to mine a bitcoin from the current $ 7,500 to $ 4,600.
According to the statement, Marathon will install 11,500 S19 Pro Antminers recently acquired by Bitmain Inc. at the new site. The machines have the ability to generate 1,265 exahashs per second of bitcoin mining power. The farm is expected to become fully operational by the second quarter of 2021.
With 500 miners already on site, the company says it intends to expand the facility to a hashrate of 3.32 EH / s in the future.
“The closing of this joint venture with Beowulf represents the completion of a long journey to own a bitcoin mining facility,” said Marathon President and CEO Merrick Okamoto.
“Partnering with an experienced independent energy producer allows us to remain in control and certainty of Marathon’s energy and operating costs, at rates that represent some of the lowest in North America.”
Beowulf said it has allocated an additional 500 megawatts of generation capacity for the “next expansion of the blockchain and data center.” Under the joint venture agreement, the energy company will become a shareholder of Marathon, as the latter retains 100% of the bitcoin mined on the farm.
Shares of Marathon fell 2.5% to $ 2.36 on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Tuesday. The stock fell from a 52-week high of $ 5.25. But it also dropped to a low of $ 0.35 over the same period.
What do you think of the Marathon-Beowulf agreement? Let us know in the comments section below.
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