Kaspa Dodges Bear Market as Marathon Reveals KAS Mining Operations

Key Takeaways

• Kaspa is one of the few crypto assets that has been in the green over the past 7 days.
• The KAS rally was propelled significantly on Wednesday when Marathon Digital revealed it has been mining the cryptocurrency.
• The price of KAS has increased by around 750% in the past year.

Among the top 25 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, only three have increased in value in the past 7 days, with the rest falling under the effects of a prevailing bearishness.

Included in the few tokens that have bucked the downward trend, the most noteworthy is Kaspa (KAS), which has surged by around 17% in the last week. In the past 24 hours alone, KAS has climbed more than 9% after Marathon Digital revealed that it is mining the cryptocurrency.

Marathon Backs KAS to Diversify Crypto Mining 

Like most of its peers, Marathon’s operations revolve around mining Bitcoin. But in recent times the company has sought to diversify its business model. 

In a statement  on Wednesday, June 26, the company announced that it first branched out into KAS mining in September 2023. The firm has allocated  60 Petahashes of mining power to the new venture, which had mined 93 million KAS as of June 25.

“By mining Kaspa, 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,” said Adam Swick, Marathon’s chief growth officer. 

A Multichain Mining Strategy

While Marathon hasn’t indicated that it is mining any other cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin and Kaspa, the company signaled an interest in multichain growth strategies when it launched the Bitcoin layer 2 Anduro earlier this year. 

Through a concept known as merge mining, Anduro lets users mine multiple tokens at the same time without having to split their hash rate. 

The first Anduro sidechain ALYS went live in March, opening a new chapter for Marathon as it transitions away from pure-play Bitcoin mining.

Between Anduro and KAS mining, the firm’s increasingly diversified revenue streams could help it weather the ups and downs of crypto market volatility. After a week in which the price of Bitcoin has fallen by more than 7%, Kaspa’s movement in the opposite direction proves exactly why such a strategy can be useful.

Kaspa’s Meteoric Rise and the Continued Relevance of PoW 

Since its launch, less than 3 years ago, Kaspa has accumulated a market capitalization of more than $4.2 billion and it is now the fifth-largest proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency.

In the last year, KAS has surged by around 750%, significantly outpacing Bitcoin and almost every other major alt coin.

Significantly, KAS is the only top-5 PoW coin that isn’t a Bitcoin fork and in terms of functionality, the project has much more room for growth than Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin. 

Unlike Bitcoin and its forks, Kaspa is well on its way to integrating native smart contracts . Once this happens the blockchain could adopt Ethereum-style rollups to facilitate more efficient transaction processing.

Kaspa’s success and Marathon’s efforts to branch out from Bitcoin demonstrate the continued appeal of PoW cryptocurrencies in general. 

Despite environmental concerns and the efficiency gains provided by Proof-of-Stake systems, there is clearly still a demand for PoW. And as long as that demand exists, miners will continue to serve it.