The Road to 23 Exahash | Short Film | Marathon Digital Holdings

"The Road to 23 Exahash," a 16-minute short film by Marathon Digital Holdings. In just a few short years, Marathon grew its operations by more than 11,000% to become one of the world's largest and most innovative Bitcoin mining companies. Curious how we got here? Here's the inside story.

Transcripts are autogenerated. May contain typos.

0:00
In 2018, Marathon Digital was an unknown company with a small Bitcoin mining operation, but we believed in Bitcoin, so we set out to become the largest Bitcoin miner in North America. And that's exactly what we did. In just a few short years, we grew our Bitcoin mining operations over 11,000%, from 2 exahashes all the way to 23 exahashes. To put this milestone in perspective, each hash can be thought of as one attempt to unlock a reward of Bitcoin from the blockchain. One exahash equals one quintillion hashes, that's one attempt for every star in the Milky Way Galaxy 4 million times over. Marathon computes at this scale 23 times over to secure the Bitcoin network every single second. And today we're still growing-we're not just part of the industry, we're setting its pace. This is the inside story of how Marathon became one of the world's largest and most innovative Bitcoin mining companies.

1:25
When I was introduced to Marathon in September of 2020, it was a very small company, totaling three employees: Merrick, Jim Crawford, and Sim Solsman. At the time, Merrick had a strong vision that he pitched to us: raise a lot of capital, buy a lot of Bitcoin miners, and turn Marathon into the biggest Bitcoin mining company in North America. Merrick bet the company on the thesis that Bitcoin would go on a run, and everyone would want to get into the mining space. He wanted to buy all the miners before anyone else could, and he was essentially correct. I got a call from a friend who said Marathon was looking for someone to manage restructuring. I didn't know anything about Bitcoin, but I educated myself, became intrigued, and got involved. My background is in trading, and I've studied money, inflation, and interest rates. Fiat currencies, historically, have all collapsed due to devaluation. When I read Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper, I saw Bitcoin as a solution to that problem. I liked that there were only 21 million fixed coins, no one could print more, and the blockchain managed itself.

4:01
We finalized the purchase of our first mining units, the S9, in early 2018 and started building out our first facility in Quebec. However, the challenges were significant: a difficult landlord, burst pipes, leaking roofs, and paint chips being sucked into our new machines' ventilation systems. After overcoming these obstacles, we made major purchases, including one of 70,000 mining units, the largest order in Bitmain's history. In January 2021, Marathon bought $150 million worth of Bitcoin, quickly becoming one of the largest holders of Bitcoin among publicly traded companies. Initially, it was all about execution-getting miners running and finding energy partners, like our facility in Hardin, Montana.

7:03
Marathon's decision to focus on renewable energy led us to King Mountain, Texas, where we partnered with a wind farm to use excess energy. However, we faced new challenges: delays in turning on miners, waiting on regulatory approvals, and weather disruptions. At one point, Marathon found itself as a Bitcoin miner that wasn't mining Bitcoin. We had to transition 30,000 miners out of the Hardin coal plant and move them to new sites. It was a massive logistical challenge, but we succeeded.

10:32
In 2022, we encountered more obstacles, including delays at King Mountain and the bankruptcy of Compute North, a key partner. But we remained agile and contracted with Applied Digital for new wind-powered sites in North Dakota and Texas. Despite these setbacks, we hit key milestones: we ramped from nearly 0 exahashes in the summer of 2022 to over 7 exahashes by early 2023. By the end of Q3 2023, we reached 19.1 exahashes, growing faster than our competitors and substantially increasing Bitcoin production.

13:15
Today, we've reached our goal of 23 exahashes and are continuing to grow. Marathon is moving toward a vertically integrated model, diversifying across different sites and geographies, including a joint venture in the UAE. We're setting the pace in the mining industry by leveraging sustainable energy sources, reducing methane emissions, and recycling heat from our operations. We are building a resilient portfolio of Bitcoin mining assets across the globe, and we're just getting started.