Digital asset technology company Marathon Digital Holdings’ bitcoin mining arm Mara Pool will have its miners updated to the latest Bitcoin Core 0.21.1 software to signal for Taproot activation and at the same time will stop censoring its transactions.
Regarding the matter, Marathon’s Chief Executive Officer Fred Thiel said they are “committed to the core tenets of the Bitcoin community, including decentralization, inclusion, and no censorship.”
The company official said their move will be facilitated over the weekend, making their miners up-to-date with the full standards of the software. Thiel further explained that in adopting the full standard Bitcoin core node, they will be “validating transactions on the blockchain in the exact same way as all other miners who use the standard node.”
Contrasting actions
The announcement of Marathon Digital Holdings came as a surprise and is in contrast to its actions in the past months.
Towards the end of March, in a move that effectively censored their transactions, the company announced its bitcoin mining arm will be filtering transactions to mine blocks in compliance with U.S. regulations, including anti-money laundering and Office of Foreign Assets Control standards.
As a matter of fact, earlier this month, Marathon reported its success in mining its first “compliant” block.
Pledging support to the Bitcoin community
Thiel also said Marathon will continue to be a collaborative and supportive member of the Bitcoin community.
He also promised the company’s support in realizing the vision of Bitcoin to be the first decentralized, peer-to-peer payment network that is “powered by its users rather than a central authority or middlemen.”
The announcement comes as a welcome development for cryptocurrency bitcoin as it is still slow in recovering its losses for the past weeks. According to tracking from CoinGecko, it is currently changing hands at almost $36,800.
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