Bitcoin – MARA tops rivals Riot, CleanSpark after mining 705 BTC in August

Key TakeawaysMARA mined 705 BTC in August and bought some too, pushing its overall holdings to 52.4K. The firm’s CEO believes the ‘slow’ growth has been due to global competition.MARA led several Bitcoin miners in output and overall growth in August. The firm reported that it produced 705 BTC last month – A slight bump from July’s 703 BTC.Overall, its BTC holdings surged to 52,447 BTC, up from its figures in late July. According to CEO Fred Thiel, they also made a ‘strategic bid’ during the August pullback.“Given the decline in Bitcoin price during the month, we took the opportunity to strategically add to our treasury and currently hold over 52,000 BTC.”Source: Bitcoin TreasuriesMARA tops rival BTC minersOn the contrary, other rivals produced less BTC than MARA. Riot Platforms, for example, produced 477 BTC while CleanSpark managed 657 BTC. Another firm, BitFuFu, mined 408 BTC in August – Translating to a 12% fall on a month-over-month (MoM) basis.However, MARA’s mining was negligible compared to July’s output. Reacting to the sluggish performance, Thiel claimed that global competition in the space surged by 6%.“Similar to last month, we produced 208 blocks in August as global hashrate increased 6% month-over-month to an average of 949 EH/s.”It meant that there were more miners in the network in August. A hike in competition always increases network difficulty and overall resources needed to confirm a block. Simply put, it makes mining operations relatively expensive and tough.Source: BlockchainAccording to the chart, the network difficulty indeed jumped from 118 trillion to a record high of nearly 130 trillion in August – Underscoring the tough competition last month.Worth pointing out, however, that MARA’s stock price fell by nearly 5% after the update and closed Thursday’s trading session at $15.11. At press time though, it was up 1.6% in pre-market hours before Friday’s session.Source: MARA/USDT, TradingViewCompared to Bitcoin, the king coin fared much better than MARA in Q3. So far this quarter, Bitcoin is up 4%, with the same trading at $112k at the time of writing.MARA has lost 3.6% of its value over the same period – A sign that it has lagged behind BTC. Finally, it’s also worth highlighting that the firm faced scrutiny over alleged BTC mining pollution recently. This could have dragged its stock’s performance.