Jefferies analyst Jonathon Peterson initiates cryptocurrency miner Marathon Digital (NASDAQ:MARA) with a Buy rating as its data center hosting strategy leaves more room for revenue growth. Shares of MARA edge lower by 1.2% in pre-market trading, while bitcoin (BTC-USD) breaks even at $36.8K per token. Note that the company uses data center hosting providers to benefit from faster deployment and a higher allocation of capital to revenue-generating ASIC miners, Peterson writes in a note to clients. This is different from vertically integrated bitcoin (BTC-USD) miners like Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ:RIOT), which builds out is own data centers to reduce operating costs in the long term. Moreover, Marathon Digital's (MARA) hosted data center will likely generate a higher internal rate of return due to its ability to deploy miners more quickly, as well as a higher capital allocation to ASICs, the analyst highlights. Peterson estimates that bitcoin (BTC-USD) will rise at a +32% compounded
