Welcome to this week’s edition of Overbit Insights.
This week, big news in the mining world as Marathon Digital is buying a record number of Bitmain Antminer S19 XP Bitcoin miners, according to the Nasdaq-listed MARA.
According to the business, Marathon intends to have 199,000 active miners generating 23.3 EH/s by early 2023, up 600 per cent from present levels, which verified this to CoinDesk.
By mid-2022, the fast-growing miner expects to have 133,000 operating miners generating 13.3 EH/s, up from 133,000 in September. Marathon has 31,000 operating miners as of December 1, generating 3.2 EX/s.
Marathon Digital’s stock was up over 12% in Thursday trade at the time of publishing.
Marathon has made many significant acquisitions of miners this year, and in October, it received a $100 million revolving line of credit in Bitcoin and US dollars through Silvergate Bank.
According to the miner, the financing will be used to fuel Bitcoin mining operations and purchase new equipment.
Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement. “Given the strength of our balance sheet and our asset-light model, which allows us to invest our capital in mining machines rather than infrastructure, we were uniquely positioned to place the largest single order of S19 XPs, in terms of total hash rate, Bitmain has ever received.”
Closing out this week’s edition of Overbit Insights, we look over to the world of Bitcoin price action. More specifically, one of Bitcoin’s loudest supporters and his price targets heading into the new year.
Michael Saylor, a Bitcoin evangelist, revealed his enormous Bitcoin price prediction—along with his personal near-$900 million Bitcoin stash—ahead of the crypto market’s pre-Christmas surge.
According to details from a November interview with technology news site The Information, MicroStrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor, who has transformed his business intelligence company into a Bitcoin acquisition vehicle over the last 18 months, believes the Bitcoin price will eventually reach $6 million.
A $6 million Bitcoin price, which has already risen from around $4,000 in March 2020 to nearly $70,000 last month, would give the nearly 19 million Bitcoins in circulation a combined value of $126 trillion, a 12,000 per cent increase from its current near-$1 trillion market capitalisation and making it the world’s most valuable commodity.
Saylor further revealed that he personally owns 17,732 Bitcoins worth $832 million at current rates and has never sold any of them. He also indicated that he does not possess any other cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin, even though many have increased significantly faster than Bitcoin in the last year.
MicroStrategy’s initial $250 million Bitcoin acquisition is now worth more than $1 billion, and the company has made a slew of further record-breaking Bitcoin purchases since then, all of which have been financed with company debt.
Since August 2020, its stock price has increased by 300 per cent, although it has fluctuated considerably with the notoriously volatile Bitcoin price.
Saylor, who made headlines during the dot-com bubble when he lost $6 billion in a single day, is known for his extreme Bitcoin claims.
This year, Bitcoin has swept Wall Street, with a number of the world’s largest financial institutions launching cryptocurrency services and investing in cryptocurrency markets.
That concludes this week’s edition of Overbit Insights! Take care, and have a wonderful holiday season.