MARA Holdings moved 996 bitcoin worth $81.13 million to an address belonging to Galaxy Digital on October 9, according to on-chain data tracked by Lookonchain. The transfer is the latest step in a treasury drawdown that has cut the company’s bitcoin stack by more than a third since February as it funds a pivot from mining into artificial intelligence infrastructure and power generation.
The transfer does not confirm a sale. Galaxy Digital operates as an institutional trading, custody and asset management firm, and coins arriving in its wallets can be sold, lent or warehoused. MARA has not commented. But the context is unambiguous: CoinDesk noted MARA shares rose about 2 percent in premarket trading on the news, and the company’s filings already show the larger move underway for months.
The treasury is down by a third on paper
Per MARA’s second-quarter shareholder letter, the company held 35,577 bitcoin on June 30, down from 49,951 a year earlier, a drop of 14,374 coins, roughly 29 percent. The shareholder letter frames the drawdown as part of a plan to “monetize bitcoin opportunistically to enhance our financial flexibility.”
The peak of the stack came on February 26, when MARA held 53,822 bitcoin, data from Bitcoin Treasuries shows. In the first half of 2026 the company sold 23,093 bitcoin for roughly $1.63 billion, an average near $70,600, according to filings summarized by MoneyCheck. In March alone it sold 15,133 bitcoin for about $1.1 billion, most of which went toward repurchasing about $1 billion of its own zero-coupon convertible notes at roughly a 9 percent discount, deleveraging the balance sheet and reducing future shareholder dilution.
Only 2,213 bitcoin were sold in the second quarter itself, at an average of $73,078, alongside 2,422 mined. The pace of selling slowed sharply after the March tranche, suggesting the treasury is being drawn down deliberately rather than dumped.
Half the remaining stack is pledged
What is left is not free to sell. MARA pledged 18,750 bitcoin, about 53 percent of its June 30 holding, as collateral on $600 million in credit facilities signed in August with Coinbase Credit and Two Prime Lending, each providing $300 million at a weighted average rate of 7.56 percent. A further 4,742 bitcoin sat in lending arrangements generating about $4.3 million of quarterly interest income, bringing the total share of the stack actively deployed under the company’s digital asset management strategy to roughly 26 percent.
The August financing directly ties the bitcoin reserve to a second cycle: proceeds from the Coinbase and Two Prime facilities are earmarked in part for the Long Ridge Energy acquisition, a 505 megawatt gas plant on 1,600 acres in Ohio, which MARA is buying for about $1.5 billion to expand AI-capable power capacity at its Hannibal campus. The deal still waits on approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and can be terminated if it has not closed by November 30, 2026, with an extension possible to June 2027 under certain regulatory conditions.
That leaves a nasty wrapped amplifier in the structure, as analysts at AInvest put it: if bitcoin’s price drops sharply, maintenance requirements on the pledged collateral could force further sales at the worst possible moment. Bitcoin trades near $82,976 after sliding roughly 24 percent over the past year, and is well below the $126,080 peak reached in October 2025.
Mining economics are deteriorating
The drawdown is funding a business under pressure. Second-quarter revenue came in at $174.9 million, down 27 percent from $238.5 million a year earlier. The company posted a net loss of $611.3 million, or $1.60 per diluted share, against a net profit of $808.2 million in the year-ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA swung from a $1.2 billion profit to a $360.9 million loss, driven largely by a $343 million fair-value loss on digital assets as bitcoin’s price fell.
The Block notes MARA is not alone. CleanSpark, the eleventh-largest corporate bitcoin holder with 13,924 bitcoin, reported a 30.5 percent revenue decline in the same quarter, to $138 million, and a net loss of $239.8 million. Both companies are pushing hard into high-performance computing as mining economics tighten, with CleanSpark pointing to a 20-year, $6.6 billion triple-net lease at Sandersville as evidence its own power assets can convert to durable cash flows.
MARA’s own operational numbers show the squeeze. Energized hashrate rose 22 percent year over year to 70.3 EH/s, but purchased energy cost per bitcoin climbed to $38,690 from $33,735, as power costs rose and network difficulty continued to outpace the company’s own hashrate growth. Cost per petahash per day improved 4 percent to $27.7, a 27 percent improvement over nine quarters, but the broader mining revenue pie is shrinking at current bitcoin prices.
The AI pivot needs paying for
Management has framed the transition as a direct extension of the mining business. “Bitcoin mining was never the destination. It was the foundation,” MARA chief executive Fred Thiel wrote in the shareholder letter, describing mining as a source of cash flow that keeps sites monetized while AI facilities are designed, permitted and built. The company has acquired rights to a strategic powered land site in Matagorda County, Texas with up to 2 GW of capacity, which could push its power portfolio toward 4.8 GW.
A separate partnership signed in February with Starwood Capital covers approximately 1 gigawatt of near-term IT capacity, with a pathway to more than 2.5 gigawatts. MARA has also acquired Exaion, a subsidiary of EDF, to broaden its private cloud capabilities. No signed AI lease has been announced as of early October, though Thiel told the H.C. Wainwright conference in September that management is “very confident” about signing two leases by year-end.
| Metric | Value | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin held (June 30, 2026) | 35,577 BTC | Down 29% from 49,951 a year earlier |
| Bitcoin sold in H1 2026 | 23,093 BTC | Roughly $1.63 billion at ~$70,600 average |
| Bitcoin pledged as collateral | 18,750 BTC | 53% of stack, against $600M in August loans |
| Q2 revenue | $174.9M | Down 27% year over year |
| Q2 net loss | $611.3M | Includes $343M fair-value loss on digital assets |
| Long Ridge acquisition | $1.5B | 505 MW Ohio gas plant, pending FERC approval |
What to watch next
Neither MARA nor Galaxy has commented on the October 9 transfer, and CoinDesk reported the stock response was muted. Three things will clarify whether coins were sold, lent or warehoused, and whether the broader strategy is working:
First, the third-quarter shareholder letter, due later this year, will show whether treasury sales accelerated after June 30 and where holdings stand now. Second, any MARA statement or SEC filing explaining the October 9 Galaxy transfer as a sale, a custody move or loan collateral will close the gap between on-chain data and corporate disclosure. Third, bitcoin’s price relative to the $80,514 and $79,742 support levels flagged by analysts, a breach of which could pressure the collateral behind the $600 million in August loans and force MARA to pledge more coins or post cash.
Analysts watching MARA will also be tracking the first signed AI lease, which Clear Street has called the key milestone, and the Long Ridge FERC clearance. With roughly half the treasury pledged and operating losses running near $600 million a quarter, the company has little room to keep selling bitcoin at current prices without further shrinking its reserve cushion, which means the next few months will determine whether the AI pivot becomes a real business or a story about a bitcoin miner that spent its stack on a bet that hasn’t paid off yet.