Marathon reports $80M exposure to bankrupt mining firm

Published at: Oct. 7, 2022

Bitcoin (BTC) miner Marathon Digital Holdings has revealed $81.3 million worth of exposure to recently bankrupted mining hosting provider Compute North.

Marathon provided a breakdown of its exposure on Oct. 6 explaining the majority was in operating deposits worth $50 million, noting these deposits “were primarily related to King Mountain and Wolf Hollow security deposits and prepayments associated with the ongoing operation of those sites.”

The remainder is split between $21.3 million allocated to “an unsecured senior promissory note” and $10 million in convertible preferred Compute North stock.

It comes weeks after Compute North submitted a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas on Sept. 23.

Under a Chapter 11 filing, the firm is able to keep its operations going as it works out plans to restructure and repay creditors.

Marathon Digital said portions of its BTC mining operations are hosted by Compute North in locations such as Texas, Nebraska and South Dakota. The firm has outlined that at this stage, its operations hosted by Compute North will continue to operate as usual.

“Based on the information available today, we do not anticipate these proceedings impacting our current operations or our ability to achieve our primary target of 23 exahashes per second in 2023.”

— Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) (@MarathonDH) October 6, 2022

“Marathon has not experienced any significant negative impacts on its operations at King Mountain, where miners continue to be energized according to schedule,” the firm stated, but noted it had “experienced some delays at Wolf Hollow [Texas], which Compute North has attributed to a regulatory matter.”

Marathon’s recent performance

While miner profit margins are bound to have been tighter given the bearish nature of BTC this year, Marathon emphasized that its operational performance is improving.

During the third quarter of 2022 Marathon mined 616 BTC — worth $12.3 million at current prices — with the firm highlighting that production significantly ramped up month-over-month, going from 72 BTC and 184 BTC in July and August respectively, to 360 BTC in September.

By the end of September, Marathon stated it had an operating mining fleet consisting “of approximately 37,000 active miners” producing around 3.8 Exahases per second (EH/s). However, the total has increased significantly since then, with 57,000 active miners producing 5.7 EH/s as of Oct. 5.

Marathon also outlined that its total BTC holdings reached 10,670 BTC, with a fair market value of around $207.3 million as of Sept. 30, while unrestricted cash on hand hit $55.3 million.