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Cryptocurrency mining company Marathon Digital Holdings has announced a partnership with digital asset infrastructure company Zero Two to build a large-scale immersive Bitcoin mining facility in Abu Dhabi.
In a May 9 notice, Marathon Digital said the joint venture would be based in Mina Zayed and Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates and would consist of two mining sites with a total capacity of 250 MW. According to the firm, Marathon and Zero Two plan to provide the facilities with surplus power from the Abu Dhabi grid, claiming this will increase baseload and resiliency.
According to Marathon Digital, cryptocurrency mining in Abu Dhabi’s desert climate, where the average annual temperature is roughly 28 degrees Celsius, has often been “unfeasible”. The firm said it helped develop a “custom immersion solution” to cool mining rigs at the proposed sites by offering a liquid cooling solution.
“For this project, our team successfully designed and implemented a full immersion solution and developed proprietary mining software from the ground up to provide flexibility, resiliency and optimization,” said Marathon Digital Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel.
We are excited to share the details of our new #Bitcoin mining sites in the UAE. Owned and operated via a joint venture with Zero Two, this initiative marks the first large-scale immersion Bitcoin mining operations in the Middle East. Learn more: https://t.co/vFROdM6urR
— Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) (@MarathonDH) May 9, 2023
The ownership of the project, called Abu Dhabi Global Markets JV Entity, will be shared between Zero Two and Marathon Digital, with both companies controlling 80% and 20% respectively. Both firms expect both Abu Dhabi sites to be online by 2024 and produce a combined hash rate of approximately 7 EH/s.
Related: Dubai to Abu Dhabi: how NFTs are being used in the UAE
The announcement of the planned mining operation comes amid a visit by US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase executives to the UAE to test the region’s potential as a “strategic hub” for its international operations. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong met with politicians and spoke at the FinTech Summit in Dubai.
