Two weeks after a massive storm, 75% of Marathon's miners are still down

Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital Holdings has revealed that 75% of its mining capacity has been disrupted since a severe storm hit Montana on June 11.

Marathon eventually issued a statement on its website on June 28, explaining that a storm hit the town of Hardin, Montana on June 11, damaging Marathon’s local mining power generation facilities. According to the company, "preliminary electrical testing found that the majority of the company's mining rigs were not substantially damaged by the storm."

The company noted that 30,000 miners, or 75 percent of the company's total equipment, have been out of production since the storm. Data from Bitcoin’s blockchain explorer shows that its miners have been offline for two-and-a-half weeks.

“With these miners offline, Marathon’s bitcoin production is expected to drop significantly until repairs to the Montana power generation facility are completed, or until the miners are relocated to new facilities.”

Marathon noted that until BeoWulf Energy's damaged power facility is repaired, the facility will remain without power.

Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said that if it can be fixed in time, the company could restart mining as early as the first week of July, albeit at reduced capacity.

The company has directed its remaining hash power to be donated to external mining pools while repairs are being made to the damaged facility.

"Marathon has transferred its remaining active mining machines (about 0.6 EH/s) from the company's mining pool MaraPool to a third-party mining pool to increase the probability of earning Bitcoin."

Exahash per second (EH/s) refers to the hash power that a mining machine contributes to the security of the Bitcoin network.

Through May, Marathon contributed about 3.9 EH/s from 36,830 active miners, holding 9,941 bitcoins worth about $204 million, according to data from CoinGecko.

According to data from Bitcoin network tracker Coinwarz, mining difficulty is at its lowest level since April this year.

The company said 1.9 miners (representing 1.9 EH/s) have been installed at the Texas facility and are awaiting the energy needed to start them up.

Given the functional failure caused by the storm in Harding, the company said it is "currently evaluating the possibility of expediting the transfer of mining equipment from Montana to a new hosting location," which could include faster deployment to its New facility in Texas to prevent this kind of problem from happening again in Harding Township.