Kaspa Price Jumps 13% As Bitcoin Mining Giant Marathon Digital Mines the Altcoin

KAS, the proof-of-work native cryptocurrency of the Kaspa blockchain, has surged by a staggering 13% in the last 24 hours on the news that Bitcoin Mining giant Marathon Digital has started mining this altcoin. As of press time, the Kaspa (KAS) price is trading at $0.1792 with a market cap of $4.3 billion thereby making its way into the top 25 cryptocurrencies.

Also, the daily trading volume for Kaspa has surged by a massive 132% to $141 million. Currently, the Kaspa price is trading close to its all-time high levels and could be heading up for a price discovery.

#Kaspa has clearly broken through the 18 cent barrier and is heading for 19 cents!

After that we can expect a new all-time high for $KAS!#crypto #pow $BTC pic.twitter.com/ruNt9kfeoL

— KASPA Enthusiast 𐤊 (@KASPAEnthusiast) June 27, 2024

Marathon Digital Starts Mining Kaspa

In its official announcement on Wednesday, June 26, Bitcoin mining giant Marathon Digital (NASDAQ: MARA) announced that it has started mining the proof-of-work cryptocurrency Kaspa.

Just like Bitcoin, Kaspa is a fully scalable, decentralized, open-source Layer-1 protocol that employs the proof-of-work consensus mechanism. But unlike Bitcoin which produces one block every ten minutes, Kaspa leverages the BlockDAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) architecture which allows it to produce multiple blocks simultaneously.

The Kaspa blockchain is capable of processing one block every second thereby facilitating faster transactions. It also awards Kaspa miners to earn more block rewards in a given time frame. This particularly could be the reason behind Marathon digital dipping its toes into mining Kaspa. Kaspa is currently the fifth-largest proof-of-work network by market cap. Also, the current block reward for Kaspa is 103.83 KAS.

Also Read: Bitcoin Miner Reserves Drop to 14-Year Low

Diversifying Their Revenue Stream

Last year, Marathon Digital started evaluating Kaspa as a means to diversify its revenue stream and started deploying ASICS for the same in September 2023.

Marathon has acquired around 60 petahash of KS3, KS5, and KS5 Pro ASICs. According to ASIC Miner Value, these devices can generate profits with margins of up to 95%, depending on the current network difficulty rate and the price of KAS. Currently, 30 petahash of Marathon’s Kaspa ASICs are operational in the company’s self-owned and operated facilities in Texas, with the rest expected to be fully operational by Q3 2024

So far, Marathon has mined a total of 93 million KAS having a current value of $15 million. Speaking on the development, Adam Swick, Marathon’s chief growth officer said:

“By mining Kaspa, we are able to create a stream of revenue that is diversified from Bitcoin, and that is directly tied to our core competencies in digital asset compute. Because of our existing infrastructure, our unique relationships with hardware manufacturers, our strong balance sheet, and the expertise of our team, Marathon was uniquely positioned to mine Kaspa and to capitalize on the higher margins that exist for those who can deploy Kaspa ASICs today.”

Also Read: Bitcoin Miner Riot Withdraws Bid for Bitfarms