GPT4 Marathon Digital diversifies revenue with 16m worth of KAS mined as Kaspa surges
The native token of proof-of-work cryptocurrency Kaspa, known as KAS, has seen a significant surge of 13% following the announcement by major Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital that it has mined over $16 million worth of the token. Marathon Digital made this move in order to diversify from Bitcoin and take advantage of the higher margins offered by Kaspa mining machines, which can reach up to 95% in certain cases.
Currently, KAS has experienced a 145% increase in trading volume and a 10% rise in price over the past 24 hours. The cryptocurrency has also risen by 20% in the last 7 days and 26% in the last 30 days, indicating a positive outlook for the altcoin this month.
According to CoinMarketCap data, Kaspa now holds the 24th position in the global cryptocurrency list, with a trade price of $0.1759. It has a circulating supply of approximately 24.035 billion KAS tokens and a market capitalization of $4.2 billion.
Kaspa is a cryptocurrency that aims to provide a high-performance, scalable, and secure blockchain platform. Its unique feature is the use of the GhostDAG protocol, a proof-of-work consensus mechanism that allows for faster block times and increased transaction throughput compared to traditional blockchains. Unlike Bitcoin, GhostDAG enables the production of multiple blocks simultaneously, leading to faster transactions and higher rewards for miners.
Adam Swick, Marathon’s chief growth officer, highlighted that mining Kaspa allows the company to generate diversified revenue from Bitcoin, as it aligns with their expertise in digital asset compute. Marathon began mining Kaspa in September of last year and has since acquired around 60 petahashes of KS3, KS5, and KS5 Pro ASICs for mining Kaspa tokens. Currently, half of these machines are operational, with the remaining set to be deployed in the third quarter. The company has already mined 93 million KAS, which is estimated to be valued at approximately $16 million.
The price of the Kaspa token has increased by approximately 50% this year, surpassing the 44% increase in Bitcoin’s price. With the crypto winter leading miners to seek alternative revenue streams and increased competition due to the halving, many miners have switched to utilizing their existing infrastructure for artificial intelligence and other computational demands. However, Marathon and other miners have opted to explore additional layers of Bitcoin to boost their earnings.
Marathon’s CEO does not anticipate an explosive surge for Bitcoin and believes that the halving is already priced in.
