Bitcoin Miner Marathon Invested $31.3M in Bankrupt Data Center Compute North

One of the largest bitcoin (BTC) miners, Marathon Digital (MARA), said it had invested $10 million in convertible preferred stock and $21.3 million unsecured senior promissory note in different entities within bankrupt data center Compute North.

Marathon, which doesn’t own its mining facilities and uses third party data centers to park their computers, also has paid about $50 million in operating deposits to Compute North, according to a statement on Thursday. These deposits were mainly related to security deposits and prepayments associated with the ongoing operation of King Mountain and Wolf Hollow mining facilities in Texas, the company said.

Compute North was the latest victim of the crypto winter and filed for bankruptcy last month citing severe bear market, supply issues and trouble with its largest lender. Marathon is one of their largest clients, who placed its miners in its data centers, for a fee, to mine bitcoins.

Read more: Troubled Data Center Compute North Struggled With Crypto Winter. Then Its Relationship With a Major Lender Soured

Marathon said that the bulk of its mining operations are hosted by a Compute North and NextEra joint venture at the King Mountain facility. It also has operations hosted by Compute North in the Wolf Hollow site, as well as minor operations in Compute North’s facilities in Nebraska and South Dakota.

However, the miner said its King Mountain and Wolf Hollow sites are not directly subject to Compute North’s bankruptcy process. Marathon said it didn’t face any significant impact at its King Mountain site, however, there were some delays at Wolf Hollow, unrelated to the bankruptcy process, according to the statement.

Currently, the miner has 5.7 exahash per second (EH/s) of computing power and expects to reach 23 EH/s mid-2023. In comparison, its peer Riot Blockchain (RIOT) has 5.6 EH/s of mining power and expects to reach 12.5 EH/s by the first quarter of next year.

The shares of Marathon have fallen 61% this year, while bitcoin lost more than 50% of its value.