Mining giant Marathon set to buy another site just weeks ahead of bitcoin halving 

Crypto miner growth initiatives ahead of the bitcoin halving are not slowing down, as one of the space’s biggest players continues its string of acquisitions.

Marathon Digital is set to buy a Texas bitcoin mining facility owned by Applied Digital for roughly $87 million in cash, the company said in a Friday news release.

The data center — located next to a wind farm — has a capacity of 200 megawatts (MW).

In addition to taking direct ownership of its current operations at the site, the firm added, Marathon intends to grow its presence at the facility by 100 MW by the end of the year.

Marathon Digital is already a titan in the mining space, with 28.7 exahashes per second (EH/s) of energized self-mining hash rate at the end of February.

The planned buy is consistent with Florida-based Marathon’s intention to scale up before the next bitcoin halving — slated for around April 20. During this event, which occurs roughly every four years, per-block rewards will drop from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.

This is set to put financial stress on companies in the sector — particularly smaller, less-efficient miners with less access to capital and high energy costs.

Read more: Bitcoin miner consolidation appears imminent as halving looms

Marathon executives said during the company’s earnings call last month that they would look to use its balance sheet — comprising roughly $1 billion worth of unrestricted cash and bitcoin combined, as of Jan. 31 — to nearly double its hash rate to 50 EH/s by the end of 2025.

“Bitcoin mining is a zero-sum game,” Marathon CEO Thiel said at the time. “There are only so many bitcoins available per day. And if you’re not out there growing our hash rate, you’re falling backwards.”

Marathon closed its acquisition of two mining facilities in Texas and Nebraska in January. It paid about $179 million for 390 MW of mining capacity in that deal and terminated competitor Hut 8’s involvement in overseeing the facilities.

The latest announced purchase is set to boost the amount of Marathon mining capacity housed on sites it owns and operates to 54%, the company added.

Marathon Digital is not the only mining company making moves ahead of the halving.

Riot Platforms bought 31,500 more miners from MicroBT for $97.4 million last month — at which point competitor CleanSpark closed its acquisition of three data centers in Mississippi.

Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot told Blockworks that while growth is also on his company’s mind, it would look to be cost-conscious in its scaling initiatives.