Marathon Patent Group announced an $23 million contract with Bitmain in August 2020 to purchase 10,500 Antminer S19 Pro mining devices as the company accelerated its bitcoin mining operations expansion.
Marathon Patent Group locked in a $23 million purchase order for 10,500 Antminer S19 Pro miners from Bitmain in August 2020, betting that next-generation hardware would give it scale in a competitive market heading into the next bitcoin bull cycle. The deal included immediate delivery of 1,360 units, with remaining machines shipping in tranches through the rest of the year.
The S19 Pro is Bitmain's latest entry as of August. It produces roughly 110 terahashes per second while consuming about 1,650 watts of power—a meaningful improvement over the prior S17 Pro generation. For miners, that efficiency spread matters at scale. One percent better power efficiency on 10,000 machines saves $50,000 to $100,000 annually in electricity costs, depending on local rates. Marathon already operated smaller numbers of S17 hardware, so the upgrade path makes engineering sense.
CEO Merrick Okamoto framed the order as a scaling bet: "This investment is expected to result in Marathon being one of, if not the largest, Bitcoin miner in North America." The long-term supply agreement also locked in pricing. Bitmain wasn't public about retail prices in 2020, but the contract value implies roughly $2,190 per machine—a bulk discount worth pursuing when entry-level pricing fluctuates.
Marathon starts with just 13,520 total miners after this batch completes delivery, which would generate about 1.55 exahashes per second. That's tiny relative to Chinese mining pools, which control tens of thousands of machines apiece. But it's meaningful relative to other North American operators, most of which are much smaller.
The S19 order reflects a broader market dynamic. As bitcoin's price recovered from the March crash toward $11,000, mining economics tilted positive again. Machines deployed today will mine for years, and the newer generation hardware has higher uptime and lower maintenance costs. For a public company like Marathon, ordering equipment that depreciates in value is a straightforward capital allocation decision—especially with a long-term supply contract removing price risk.
Bitmain has been shipping S19 hardware since May 2020, so there's no technology surprise here. What matters is whether Marathon can secure electricity arrangements at prices low enough to justify holding all that capacity online full-time. That's a harder problem than buying the hardware.
