Marathon Digital’s 37 EH/s expansion and the mining difficulty drop

Hash rate expansion and difficulty

Marathon Digital Holdings increased its 2024 hash rate target from 35-37 EH/s to 50 exahash. The company began 2024 with 24.7 EH/s energized. I see a massive scale change. Bitcoin mining difficulty fell 10.09% in June from 138.96 trillion to 124.93 trillion. This was the second largest negative adjustment of 2026. It followed an 11.16% drop in February. In February, the difficulty spiked 14.73% to 144.4 trillion after winter storms in the US knocked miners offline. Foundry USA saw its hashrate drop from 400 EH/s to 198 EH/s. Network hashrate fell between 12% and 23% from October peaks to levels between 740 and 886 EH/s. This 11th largest difficulty drop in Bitcoin history followed a 15% price decline in June. Blocks took 15.6 days to find, which was above the 14-day target. Hashprice sat around $32 to $33 per PH/s per day. The gap between the $84,300 estimated production cost and the $65,600 market price forces many miners to sell their holdings to fund operations throughout this difficult period of low rewards. Bitcoin price drawdown from the last difficulty low reached 21%. The Puell Multiple fell from 0.83 to 0.74 over ten days.

Comparing Marathon and Riot

Riot Platforms leads on most metrics.

I focus on debt.

Marathon has a debt to equity ratio of 140.16, while Riot keeps this at 40.03. Marathon reported a trailing twelve-month net income of $927 million, but Riot reported only $164 million. The gap between the $84,300 estimated production cost and the $65,600 market price forces many miners to sell their holdings to fund operations throughout this difficult period of low rewards.

Marathon revenue growth is -26.70%. Riot revenue growth reached 13.90%. Check the revenue. Marathon reported $919 million in trailing revenue, while Riot reported $637 million. Marathon trades at 3.5x earnings, while Riot trades at 31.3x earnings. Marathon has a price to book of 2.76, and Riot has a price to book of 3.70. Marathon has a beta of 5.34, and Riot has a beta of 3.83. Marathon’s market cap is $3.53 billion, while Riot’s market cap is $4.72 billion. Marathon has a return on equity of 23%, and Riot has a return on equity of 5%. Riot reported $167.2 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, which was up from $161.4 million in the same period in 2025. Riot produced 1,473 Bitcoin in the quarter, which was down from 1,530 in the first quarter of 2025. Riot’s Bitcoin mining revenue was $111.9 million, and this was down from $142.9 million in the same period in 2025. Riot’s average cost to mine Bitcoin was $44,629. Riot has $282.5 million in cash on hand.

Altcoin diversification

Marathon deployed 60 PH/s of Antminer KS3, KS5, and KS5 Pro machines for Kaspa. The company mined 93 million KAS worth $15 million by June 25. This follows the Bitcoin halving in April. Block subsidy rewards dropped from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Can altcoin margins hold?

Marathon mined $176 million of Bitcoin in Q1. The company holds 17,857 BTC worth $1.1 billion. Kaspa has a market cap of $4.2 billion. The 24-hour trading volume for Kaspa is $128 million. Kaspa has a total supply of 28.7 billion KAS and a block reward of 103.83 KAS. Kaspa is the fifth-largest proof-of-work cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. Kaspa processes one block every second using a BlockDAG. Chief Growth Officer Adam Swick said the company is uniquely positioned to mine Kaspa.

The margins are thin.