CleanSpark mined 694 BTC—up 9.4% from April—while boosting its hashrate to 45.6 EH/s and expanding its treasury to 12,502 BTC. The company also sold 293.5 BTC for $30 million in revenue. Meanwhile, Marathon hit a record 950 BTC mined in May—a 35% jump—with 282 blocks mined. Despite industry challenges like soaring difficulty and network hashrate, Marathon’s self-operated mining pool and infrastructure stack gave it an edge. However, a legal cloud looms after Malikie Innovations sued both Marathon and Core Scientific over ECC patent claims.
CleanSpark Mined 694 BTC in May
CleanSpark reported an impressive uptick in its Bitcoin mining performance for May 2025, producing 694 BTC. This is an increase of 9.4% compared to April’s 633 BTC. The company also boosted its hashrate to 45.6 exahashes per second, up from 42.4 the previous month, and expanded its contracted power capacity to 987 megawatts.
These achievements contributed to CleanSpark’s growing Bitcoin treasury, which now holds 12,502 BTC. This is also more than double the amount it held a year ago. This growth occurred without any new equity issuance since November of 2024.
CleanSpark’s May highlights
CEO and president Zach Bradford hailed May as a strong execution month due to improvements in efficiency and the company's infrastructure-first strategy. CleanSpark is currently the sixth-largest public Bitcoin holder.
On June 3, after the release of its May performance report, the company’s shares rose 6.5% intraday. Over the past month, CleanSpark’s stock also managed to gain 13.8%, outpacing the Nasdaq.
ClearSpark’s stock price over the past month (Source: Google Finance)
Additionally, the company sold 293.5 BTC at an average price of $102,254 per coin, generating approximately $30 million in revenue. CleanSpark’s most recent quarterly earnings showed $182 million in revenue—a 62.5% increase year-over-year—though it still posted a net loss of $139 million.
CleanSpark’s positive performance comes amid a broader uptick in mining activity among its competitors. Riot Platforms posted an 11% increase in mined Bitcoin after producing 514 BTC in May compared to 463 in April. Shares of both MARA and Riot Platforms rose After their respective announcements.
Riot Platform stock price over the past 24 hours (Source: Google Finance)
Mara Hits Record 950 BTC in May
Marathon Digital Holdings (Mara), which is one of the largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining firms in the US, also achieved a record-breaking month in May after producing 950 BTC despite a rising Bitcoin network hashrate and increasing mining difficulty. This was a huge 35% increase in production compared to April and included the highest number of blocks ever mined by the company in a single month—282 blocks. This number rose 38% month-over-month. The milestone happened despite the ongoing challenges in the mining sector, including elevated network difficulty and soaring hashrate levels.
As of the end of May, Mara’s total Bitcoin holdings stood at 49,179 BTC, valued at approximately $5.2 billion. Notably, the company did not sell any Bitcoin during the month, and further expanded its already large reserve.
MARA’s May highlights
Chief financial officer Salman Khan attributed part of this strong performance to Mara’s strategic advantage of operating its own mining pool, which allows the company to avoid paying fees to third-party operators and retain the full value of mined rewards.
Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel pointed out that May was the most productive month for the firm since the April 2024 Bitcoin halving. He believes that the company’s vertically integrated technology stack and self-operated pool make Mara unique among publicly traded mining companies. Thiel also mentioned that the firm has consistently outperformed the network average in block reward "luck" by more than 10%, giving it an edge in block production efficiency.
This achievement comes at a time when the Bitcoin mining environment as a whole is becoming increasingly competitive and resource-intensive. Blockchain.com data shows that the Bitcoin network’s hashrate reached a record 942 EH/s on May 31. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty rose above 126 trillion after an adjustment on May 30. This is a measure of how hard it is to find a new block, and only adds more pressure on mining firms to innovate and scale effectively.
Despite these headwinds, Mara’s strong May performance proves the growing importance of operational control, infrastructure investment, and strategic advantage in the very competitive Bitcoin mining sector.
Patent Lawsuit Targets Bitcoin Miners
Despite these impressive May results, things are not going well for all miners. Malikie Innovations, a firm that acquired more than 32,000 patents from BlackBerry in 2023, launched legal action against two of the largest Bitcoin mining companies in the United States—Marathon Digital Holdings and Core Scientific.
The lawsuits accuse the firms of infringing on patents related to Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which is a core technology used in the Bitcoin blockchain. Malikie now claims to own the technology through its patent acquisitions. The filings allege that the Bitcoin protocol utilizes cryptographic innovations that fall under Malikie’s intellectual property portfolio, and that Marathon and Core Scientific are profiting from unauthorized use of these methods in their mining operations.
While the cases target corporate miners, experts suggest individual Bitcoin users are unlikely to face similar legal risk. Attorney Aaron Brogan explained that suing individuals is not practical, as they are typically not lucrative targets. He added that mining companies, on the other hand, hold a lot of assets, making them much more vulnerable to such lawsuits.
If Malikie is successful, the companies could be liable for up to six years of unpaid royalties. This figure could potentially push the defendants toward bankruptcy depending on the court's assessment of damages.
Legal experts see broader implications if Malikie were to win. Brogan warned that a victory could establish a precedent for even more lawsuits against other Bitcoin mining companies, which could cause major legal and financial uncertainty across the industry. However, most analysts believe Malikie’s real aim is not to destabilize the Bitcoin network, but to negotiate settlements or licensing deals. Crypto attorney Michael Bacina explained that so-called “patent trolls” usually seek financial compensation rather than full court victories, and Malikie is likely pursuing a similar strategy.
Even if infringement is found, Bacina pointed out that the debate may continue over whether use of open-source technology like Bitcoin actually constitutes a violation of these patents. Others, like AMLBot legal head Niko Demchuk, cast doubt on the strength of Malikie’s case due to the possibility that the patents in question are expired or only cover specific implementation details, rather than the fundamental ECC algorithms used by Bitcoin. Overall, the outcome of the case could hinge on how the court interprets the patents' scope.
