Share this article
Marathon Appoints Fred Thiel as Chief Executive Officer
Thiel will take over at a time when Marathon is aggressively expanding operations.
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 12:46 p.m. Published Apr 26, 2021, 2:36 p.m.
North American bitcoin miner Marathon Digital has appointed Fred Thiel as chief executive officer.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
Thiel will replace Merrick Okamoto, who will take on a role as the executive chairman of Marathon’s board after serving as CEO since 2017. Thiel has served on the publicly traded company’s board since 2018, when it was still known as Marathon Patent Group. The company name changed on March 1.
“The board of directors and I concluded that it was an appropriate time to adjust the responsibilities of our management team to be more in line with a company of our size. Therefore, going forward, I will be focusing my attention on my responsibilities as executive chairman of the board, while Fred Thiel will take the helm as CEO,” Okamoto said in a press release.
Before joining Marathon’s board, Thiel served as the CEO of Gamespy (which merged with IGN) and a number of software companies.
What began as a patent company for encryption software in the 2010s, Marathon Digital is now one of the larger bitcoin mining companies in North America. Marathon expects to have over 100,000 machines online by early next year. Okamoto said this would give the Marathon “10.37 exahashes per second” of mining power (bitcoin’s current hashrate is just under 160 exahashes per second.
Rivals like Riot and Blockcap are also aggressively scaling their mining capabilities, with the newcomer Blockcap out-mining both Riot or Marathon in Q1 of this year.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Coinbase Sees Crypto Recovery Ahead as Liquidity Improves and Fed Rate Cut Odds Climb
The crypto exchange also took note of a so-called AI bubble that continues to go strong and a weaker U.S. dollar.
What to know:
- Coinbase Institutional is seeing a potential December recovery in crypto, citing improving liquidity and a shift in macroeconomic conditions that could favor risk assets like bitcoin.
- The firm's optimism is driven by rising odds of Federal Reserve rate cuts, with markets pricing in a 93% chance easing next week, and improving liquidity conditions.
- Several recent institutional developments, including Vanguard's crypto ETF policy reversal and Bank of America's greenlighting of crypto allocations, have contributed to bitcoin's rebound from recent lows.
Top Stories
