Bitcoin miners which might be nonetheless drawing electrical energy from grid-attached energy sources will battle after the subsequent halving occasion in 2028, MARA Holdings (MARA) stated in a shareholder letter.
“For these miners nonetheless counting on grid-attached energy, the writing is on the wall. Power prices will solely rise. The 2028 halving will possible drive one other industry-wide reckoning. Many could not survive,” the letter stated.
The assertion comes because the mining {industry} has already been struggling to remain worthwhile following a current halving occasion that noticed bitcoin rewards reduce in half, forcing some miners to diversify their income sources into high-performance computing (HPC) and synthetic intelligence (AI).
MARA, one of many largest bitcoin miners, stated that in such a aggressive market, miners would wish to distinguish themselves or would danger falling behind and struggling to remain worthwhile. “Those who fail to distinguish shall be relegated to being value takers in an more and more aggressive market.”
The miner’s answer, which it claims to have already taken an “early lead,” is to safe low-cost vitality, vertically combine their operations and broaden past the standard bitcoin mining business- alluding to the truth that miners have to cater to different computing wants reminiscent of AI and HPC.
“Our potential to accumulate websites and generate low price vitality, activate depreciated {hardware} and vitality belongings, and run a vertically built-in mannequin – from software program and {hardware}, and now, to vitality era – will present us better management over prices.” To this finish, MARA most not too long ago purchased a Texas wind farm that may decrease the miner’s energy prices.
MARA stated it has additionally ramped up improvement and gross sales of information middle infrastructure, which can turn into the bottom layer of infrastructure for any computing wants.
“Whether or not for bitcoin mining or AI inference, we imagine our applied sciences will activate others to construct whereas MARA supplies the picks and shovels to deploy new techniques and companies, reminiscent of vitality administration, load balancing, and infrastructure,” MARA stated.
The miner additionally reported its fourth-quarter earnings, the place its gross sales of $214.4 million beat the common analyst estimate of $187.8 million, in keeping with FactSet knowledge. MARA inventory rose greater than 8% within the post-market buying and selling, whereas bitcoin was down 4.2% on Wednesday.
