Shares in Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) and Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) fell on Monday after both companies revealed a decline in January Bitcoin production.
Marathon Digital, a leading Bitcoin mining company, reported a production of 1,084 Bitcoins in January. This marks a significant decrease of 42% compared to December. However, it shows a substantial increase of 58% compared to the last year.
Fred Thiel, the CEO of Marathon, explained that despite facing challenges such as weather-related issues and equipment failures, the company managed to increase its energized hash rate by 7% to 26.4 exahash. However, these disruptions caused site outages and reduced the average operational hash rate to 19.3 exahash in January.
In his words,
“In January, we increased our energized hash rate 7% to 26.4 exahash as our team worked to address several temporary disruptions that negatively impacted our production. These disruptions included weather-related curtailment and equipment failures that led to site outages and reduced our average operational hash rate 14% to 19.3 exahash in January.”
On the other hand, Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) generated 520 Bitcoins in January, marking a 16% decline compared to December and a 30% drop from the previous year.
Jason Les, CEO of Riot, said:
“Riot had a strong month in January, mining 520 Bitcoin while utilizing our unique power strategy.”
Les further explained that the extreme cold weather in Texas increased the power demand. Riot’s efforts in power curtailment during peak demand periods helped stabilize the grid, resulting in $3.3 million in Power and Demand Response Credits. This amount is approximately equivalent to 77 Bitcoins, based on the average price of Bitcoin during January.
Marathon (NASDAQ: MARA) and RIOT Stock Price Action
MARA stock fell 8.57% to $16.64, and RIOT stock dropped 7.76% to $10.34 on Monday.
Edward Cooke is a financial analyst, freelance writer, and editor. He has six years of experience in financial journalism. He has an in-depth understanding of equities markets, tracking major indices and providing real-time analysis on stock price movements, corporate earnings, and market sentiment.
