Marathon to Buy Fastblock for $22M in Stock, Gaining Speed and Halving Bitcoin-Mining Costs

Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency mining company Marathon Patent Group signed a letter of intent to acquire the mining-as-a-service company Fastblock Mining, founded in 2014, in an all-stock deal.

• Marathon will acquire Fastblock for 8,658,009 common shares, currently trading around $2.48, giving the deal a total value of about $22 million.
• After deploying Fastblock’s 3,304 ASIC miners, Marathon’s mining power will increase by 208 petahash per second, according to the announcement.
• Marathon also said the deal will cut its overall cost to mine bitcoin (BTC) from $7,400 per BTC to $3,600 per BTC due to the lower-than-industry-standard electricity cost of $0.0285 per KwH.
• Fastblock has been “actively seeking a partner that could help us build one of the largest bitcoin mining companies in North America,” according to Fastblock CEO Bernardo Schucman.
• Schucman will stay on with Marathon after the deal and become its head of mining operations.
• Marathon said it will work with Fastblock’s management team to expand the current power capacity in Fastblock's Atlanta facility from of 15MwH to 45MwH. The facility may be expanded up to a maximum of 100MwH of power should Marathon's expansion efforts require additional power, the company said. 
• The acquisition is the latest move in Marathon's push to rapidly expand its mining operations in light of the recent runup in BTC. On Monday, Marathon announced its receipt of 1,300 new mining machines –⁠ WhatsMiner M31S+ and S19 Pros –⁠ with 1,000 additional S19 Pros expected to arrive by December.
• Marathon said it expects the acquisition to close by the end of September.

Update (August 26, 15:30 UTC): This article has been updated with the company’s halving of mining costs and additional information about Bernardo Schucman.