Marathon Digital Holdings didn’t sell any of its Bitcoin in June.
The decision marks a growing trend among United States-based Bitcoin (BTC) miners, who are choosing to keep the Bitcoin they mine rather than sell it.
Cointelegraph spoke to Salman Khan, Marathon’s chief financial officer, to better understand how miners decide when to accumulate their Bitcoin and when to move them onto the market.
“It’s a very systematic process that we go through from an internal process standpoint,” Khan told Cointelegraph. “There are market dynamics that you have to consider […] in the short term, the Bitcoin price could fluctuate, and your decision could be impacted as a result of that.”
Khan explained why Bitcoin is different from other asset classes when it comes to these considerations.
“If we were an oil company and we were producing oil, we would sell all our oil from whatever we produce because that would be our primary source of revenue and cash flows,” Khan explained. “In this space, it’s a little bit different. Bitcoin is a digital asset, and it can stay on your balance sheet and doesn’t require any cost to store. You don’t need big barrels to store Bitcoin.”
Marathon holds 18,536 Bitcoin worth over $1 billion, up 48% from 2023’s total of 12,538.
“Last year, the rate of return on this asset class was 150% over the last few years. When you look at the average rate of returns, it’s been outclassing or outperforming other asset classes that are typically available for corporations to invest in,” Khan said, adding:
“We obviously are a big believer in the Bitcoin price going up further from here. We don’t need to sell Bitcoin every month.”
US miners accumulate BTC
Marathon is not the only US Bitcoin miner accumulating BTC right now. Riot Platforms has not sold Bitcoin since January, while CleanSpark has only sold nominal amounts.
Given that these firms mine hundreds of Bitcoin every month, the clear trend among the big US mining firms is accumulation.
CleanSpark CEO Zach Bradford told Cointelegraph that the strategy is born out of pragmatism.
“We are not ideological about hodling…
..
