Marathon Digital Holdings Becomes the First North American Enterprise Miner to Produce Fully AML and OFAC Compliant Bitcoin

Company Successfully Directs all of its Hashrate to the Marathon OFAC Pool, the First North American-Based Bitcoin Mining Pool, Fully Compliant with U.S. Regulations

LAS VEGAS, May 05, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MARA) ("Marathon" or "Company"), one of the largest enterprise Bitcoin self-mining companies in North America, has successfully directed all of its hashrate to the Marathon OFAC Pool, Marathon’s recently launched mining pool, thereby becoming the first North American enterprise Bitcoin miner to produce Bitcoin in a manner that adheres to anti-money laundering (AML) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (OFAC’s) standards.

On March 30, Marathon announced that it was launching the first Bitcoin mining pool based in North America that is fully compliant with U.S. regulations, including AML and OFAC’s standards. The mining pool refrains from processing transactions from those listed on the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN), therefore ensuring all bitcoin mined by the pool is compliant with U.S. regulatory standards.

On May 1, Marathon began directing all of its hashrate to the new mining pool. As a result, all bitcoin that Marathon produces from May 1 onwards will be produced in a manner that complies with U.S. regulatory standards. While Marathon is the first U.S.-based enterprise miner to point its miners towards this pool and to integrate these standards, the pool will begin accepting other U.S.-based Bitcoin mining companies on June 1, 2021.

“We’ve built Marathon into one of the leading Bitcoin miners in North America, and we are always looking for innovative ways to improve on that position and to better our industry as a whole by enabling more institutions and individuals to participate,” said Fred Thiel, Marathon’s CEO. “The mining pool we recently launched is an archetype of our philosophy and approach to the industry. Today, the majority of Bitcoin’s global hashrate is concentrated in pools in a single country outside the United States, and there is little regulatory oversight of how U.S.-based miners process transactions. We believe the concentration of mining pools and the lack of oversight pose potential risks to our industry.