Marathon Digital Holdings has embarked on a venture to mine Bitcoin using energy harnessed from methane emissions at a landfill site. This initiative, which is a 280-kW off-grid pilot project, is underway in Utah.
For this environmentally conscious project, Marathon has partnered with Nodal Power. Nodal Power, which began its operations in November 2022, specializes in generating power from landfill gases predominantly in the southeast of the United States and Texas. Following a successful $13 million seed funding round in August, the company has been operational at two locations, with one facility incorporating a data center.
In a press release, Marathon Digital outlined the project’s alignment with a wider company strategy aimed at verifying the potential to utilize methane from landfill sites, transforming it into electricity, and then deploying this electricity to operate Bitcoin mining rigs. Fred Thiel, the CEO of Marathon, commented:
“If the pilot project lives up to our projections, we are poised to increase our presence in this niche and support landfill operators and other stakeholders in achieving their environmental goals.”
The pursuit of environmentally sustainable energy sources for Bitcoin mining is on the rise. For instance, Genesis Digital Assets Limited launched an 8-MW mining facility in Sweden in August, which is powered by hydroelectricity. Moreover, Marathon inaugurated a 200-MW immersion-cooling mining center in the eco-friendly Masdar City in Abu Dhabi towards the end of October. In the same month, they published a study asserting the feasibility and multiple benefits of cryptocurrency mining at landfill locations for miners, site operators, and the environment. This is particularly significant as the United Nations has indicated that methane poses a greater environmental threat than carbon dioxide.
Despite these advancements, Marathon Digital’s financial performance in the second quarter did not meet market expectations, even though the company mined a record-breaking 2,926 Bitcoins. The company did report a year-over-year revenue increase of 228% to $132.8 million for the quarter.
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