The bitcoin miner Marathon Digital said that it had paid off its revolver borrowings last month. As a result, it was able to release the bitcoin it had been holding as collateral and increase its unrestricted holdings from 4,200 to 7,815 BTC.
The company finished the year with $103.7 million in unconstrained cash, despite the mining industry's difficulties. Total bitcoin held was 12,232 BTC.
"We also took proactive measures to strengthen our liquidity position and enhance the performance of our mining fleet. Given the macroeconomic uncertainty heading into 2023, we decided to fully pay down outstanding balances under our revolving credit agreement."
-Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement Thursday
Mining companies experienced a liquidity problem after months of operating at low margins, and many in the sector have attempted to reduce their borrowing. This week, Stronghold and noteholders negotiated an agreement to convert $17.9 million in convertible debt into $23.1 million in convertible preferred shares, while Core Scientific filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with a proposal to convert the majority of its debt into stock.
Marathon had a hash rate of 7 EH/s towards the end of the year, but it still expects it to rise to 23 EH/s by the middle of 2023.
In comparison to the same period the previous year, Stronghold Digital Mining reported a larger third-quarter financial loss on November 20, 2022. The company stated that the increase in revenues by 311% was primarily caused by an increase of $10.2 million in cryptocurrency mining income from the deployment of additional miners and an increase of $9.1 million in energy income due to higher prevailing power prices per MW and higher MW generation as a result of the November 2021 Panther Creek Plant acquisition.
In December, Marathon expanded the scope of its agreement with hosting firm Applied Digital to include 12,000 additional machines, which are anticipated to be online the following month, pending regulatory approval to turn them on.