Title Of America’s Largest BTC Fought Over By Riot And Marathon

Marathon Patent Group, a crypto mining firm based in Nevada, has recently announced that it had purchased 10,000 Antminer S-19 Pro ASICs. This stands as part of the firm’s plans to become the largest crypto mining firm within the North American Continent.

Massive Expansion Of Equipment

The publicly-traded firm made the purchase announcement on the 26th of October, 2020. In turn, the firm revealed that it plans to take command of an operational hash rate of 2.56 Exahashes per second (EH/s) in July of 2021. This would equate to a total of 1.9% of the current hash power within the entire Bitcoin network.

In its previous bout of equipment purchasing, the firm had acquired 10,500 S19 Pros, all in a bid to support its existing operation, which was just 2,560 units in total at the time.

Barring 500 other miners set to arrive in November this year, the miners themselves will be delivered in phases throughout 2021’s first half. 4,000 units are set to arrive in January, with another 6,300 units in February. In the last stretch, 4,800 units will be delivered in March, before April, May, and June giving each 1,800 units, respectively.

A New Race To The Top

Until the announcement came from Marathon, Riot Blockchain, its competitor, was eying the title of the top miner of the region, planning for a 2.3 EH/s hashrate for June of 2021. This came after the firm had purchased a whopping 18,640 S-19s this year, as well.

The current operational hash rate for Riot stands at 519 pentahashes per second (PH/s), which is currently beating the capacity Marathon has at this moment, which is 300 PH/s, more or less. It’s expected that Marathon will overtake Riot in April 2021.

Layer 1 Out Of The Ring For Now

Layer 1, a crypto firm based in Texas, was one of the big competitors in crypto mining, but seems -to have been side-tracked while chasing its goal of claiming 30% of the global hash rate. This occurred thanks to a US district judge having rejected the motion of the firm to dismiss a lawsuit of patent infringement. This suit was brought to bear by Lancium, a technology firm.

Lancium holds the claim that the mining operations for Layer 1 are in direct violation of its patent regarding a system aiding data centers to shut down or restart. The system does this as a response to electricity prices fluctuating in the regions the centers are based in. Lancium had filed its patent in March, and claims that Layer 1 is making use of the same system, using it under the title of “proprietary demand-response software.”

Micheal McNamara, the CEO of Lancium, gave a public statement about the matter, showing appreciation for Judge Albright’s rapid denial of the motion. McNamara stated that he was eager for the case’s next phases, ultimately leading up to presenting the case itself to a jury.