Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) are the two largest publicly traded Bitcoin miners in the United States, with combined market capitalizations exceeding $10 billion at peak. Their stories illustrate how Bitcoin mining transformed from a cypherpunk hobby into a Wall Street-traded industrial operation.
Marathon Digital, led by CEO Fred Thiel, pursued an aggressive growth strategy — acquiring massive quantities of ASICs and building or leasing mining facilities across the US and internationally. By late 2024, Marathon operated over 30 EH/s of hash rate, making it one of the largest single mining operations globally. The company also adopted a “HODL” strategy, keeping mined bitcoin on its balance sheet rather than selling, accumulating over 40,000 BTC. Marathon’s stock (MARA) became a popular proxy for bitcoin exposure among institutional investors who couldn’t or wouldn’t buy BTC directly.
Riot Platforms, based in Castle Rock, Colorado, operates the massive Rockdale, Texas mining facility — one of the largest in North America at over 700 megawatts of power capacity. CEO Jason Les oversaw Riot’s transformation from a small miner into an industrial-scale operation. Riot differentiated through its power strategy: securing long-term, fixed-rate electricity contracts in Texas and participating in ERCOT’s demand response programs, where Riot gets paid to shut down during peak grid demand — sometimes earning more from not mining than from mining.
Both companies faced the 2024 halving head-on. With block rewards cut in half, revenue per hash dropped dramatically. Marathon responded by diversifying into transaction fee optimization and Kaspa mining. Riot expanded internationally and explored AI/HPC data center conversions — repurposing mining infrastructure for artificial intelligence workloads, which pay higher margins than Bitcoin mining. The pivot to AI hosting represents a potential future for mining companies: using their power infrastructure and cooling expertise for more profitable computing workloads.
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