Ramazan Eles 
Marathon Digital, the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) miner by market capitalization, saw its shares surge 18% after the approval of its inclusion in the S&P SmallCap 600 index fund.
S&P Dow Jones Indices said after the close of trading on Friday, May 3, that Marathon will replace heating and ventilation equipment maker Aaon in the index on May 8. The S&P SmallCap 600 tracks 600 U.S. companies with market capitalizations between $1 billion and $6.7 billion that have reported profits in both the most recent quarter and the past four quarters.
According to Google Finance, Marathon Digital (MARA) shares jumped about 18% to $20.67 on Monday, May 6.
The stock price is up 25.2% since Bitcoin’s halving. However, MARA is down 9.86% year-to-date and hit its 2024 high of $31.03 on February 28. Marathon is likely to be one of the more heavily weighted stocks in the index, given its $5.6 billion market cap and the S&P SmallCap 600’s use of a float-adjusted market capitalization weighting methodology.
The addition of Marathon to the index comes at a time when the company is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings on May 9, with investment research firm Zacks expecting revenue to soar 280% year-over-year to $193.9 million and earnings per share of $0.02 – a 166.7% increase year-over-year. Shares of Marathon’s rival Bitcoin mining companies also performed well on May 6, with CleanSpark (CLSK) and TeraWulf (WULF) up about 8% and 10.7%, respectively.
The rally in Bitcoin mining stocks comes at a time when miner revenue has been hit by the halving. However, transaction fees have since started to rise, according to mempool.space data, and are currently trading between 0.2 BTC and 1 BTC for block 842,350.