Rapid hashrate expansion and in-house chip development have pushed Bitdeer close to the top of the global mining hierarchy, raising fresh questions about how scale is measured in the sector.
Bitcoin mining leadership is being reshaped as Bitdeer Technologies Group reports a sharp rise in computing power that could place it ahead of MARA Holdings in overall capacity. The Singapore-based miner said it ended December with 71 exahashes per second of hashrate under management, a level that would exceed MARA’s disclosed 61.7 EH/s of energized hashrate.
The shift matters at a time when competition among publicly traded miners has intensified following the 2024 Bitcoin halving, which compressed margins and rewarded operators with greater scale, lower costs, and access to proprietary technology. With global hashrate continuing to climb, miners are under pressure to demonstrate efficiency as much as raw size.
Bitdeer’s reported figure includes 55.2 EH/s dedicated to its own self-mining operations, alongside additional capacity hosted for third parties. If taken at face value, the total represents roughly 6 percent of the global Bitcoin network’s computing power, according to company data.
However, direct comparisons remain complex. MARA reports “energized hashrate,” while Bitdeer uses “total hashrate under management,” a broader metric that blends company-owned and hosted machines. The lack of standardized reporting across the industry has made headline rankings increasingly difficult to interpret.
Efficiency gains drive production surge
Beyond headline capacity, Bitdeer’s recent growth has been driven by a shift toward vertically integrated hardware. The company has deployed its proprietary SEALMINER chips, phasing out a significant portion of third-party rigs in favor of in-house designs.
Its latest SEAL04-1 chips are designed to operate at roughly 6 to 7 joules per terahash at the chip level under low-voltage conditions. That efficiency, while not directly comparable to fleet-wide metrics used by peers, has contributed to a sharp increase in output. Bitdeer mined 636 bitcoins in December 2025, up from 145 bitcoins in the same month a year earlier, marking a 339 percent year-over-year rise.
The production jump highlights how chip-level performance is becoming a differentiating factor in mining economics, particularly as electricity costs and capital expenditures remain under scrutiny. Analysts note that miners able to control both hardware design and deployment timelines may have an advantage in navigating future network difficulty increases.
Diverging strategies among mining giants
While Bitdeer focuses on hardware development and capacity expansion, MARA has pursued a different path. The U.S.-based miner operates 18 data centers, primarily using Bitmain’s Antminer ASICs, and has emphasized balance sheet strength as a core strategy.
MARA has accumulated more than 55,000 bitcoins, making it one of the largest corporate holders of the asset. Bitdeer, by contrast, reported holding 2,017 bitcoins, reflecting a more operationally focused approach that prioritizes reinvestment and infrastructure buildout over treasury accumulation.
The divergence underscores a broader split within the mining sector. Some firms are positioning themselves as long-term bitcoin holders, while others are leaning into industrial-scale infrastructure and technology platforms that extend beyond mining alone.
Bitdeer has already begun pivoting parts of its global footprint toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. The company is developing AI and HPC infrastructure across eight sites in Canada, Ethiopia, Norway, and several U.S. states, with 1,152 GPUs deployed across its campuses.
The growing overlap between Bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure reflects shifting demand for data center capacity and low-cost energy. As miners seek new revenue streams, the line between crypto infrastructure providers and general-purpose compute operators is becoming increasingly blurred.
Whether Bitdeer can sustain its momentum and clearly surpass MARA depends not only on future deployments but also on how the industry ultimately defines and compares scale. What is clear is that the race for mining leadership is no longer just about who owns the most machines, but who can run them most efficiently while adapting to a changing compute landscape.
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