Following the announcement that Bitcoin mining behemoth Marathon Digital has begun mining this altcoin, KAS, the proof-of-work native cryptocurrency of the Kaspa blockchain, has seen an astounding 13% increase in value in the last day. With a market size of $4.3 billion as of the publication, the price of (KAS) is trading at $0.1792, placing it in the top 25 cryptocurrencies.
KAS daily trade volume has increased dramatically by 132% to $141 million. The price of Kaspa is currently trading near its all-time high and may be about to reach 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 (@KASEnthusiast) June 27, 2024
Kaspa Mining Begins at Marathon Digital
The massive Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital (NASDAQ: MARA) declared on Wednesday, June 26th, that it has begun mining the proof-of-work cryptocurrency KAS.
Kaspa is an open-source, fully scalable, decentralized Layer-1 protocol that uses the proof-of-work consensus process, just like Bitcoin. In contrast to Bitcoin, which generates a single block every 10 minutes, utilizes the Directed Acyclic Graph (BlockDAG) architecture to create several blocks concurrently.
Because the KAS blockchain can process a block every second, transactions can happen more quickly. ItKaspa miners are also rewarded with higher block rewards in a specified time. This, in particular, might be the cause of Marathon Digital’s recent exploration mining. Based on market capitalization, Kaspa is currently the fifth-biggest proof-of-work network. Furthermore, Kaspa’s current block reward is 103.83 KAS.
Changing Up Their Source of Income
Marathon Digital began evaluating last year to diversify its revenue stream. In September 2023, it will start installing ASICS for the same purpose.
Marathon acquired about 60 petahash of KS3, KS5, and KS5 Pro ASICs. Depending on the price of KAS and the current network difficulty rate, these devices have the potential to produce profits with margins as high as 95%, according to ASIC Miner Value. Currently, 30 Petahash of Marathon’s ASICs are used in its wholly owned and run facilities in Texas; the remaining units are anticipated to reach total capacity by Q3 2024.
With a current value of $15 million, Marathon has mined 93 million KAS thus far. Speaking on the development, Adam Swick, Marathon’s chief growth officer, said:
“By mining KAS, 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.”
