MARA Holdings, the bitcoin miner formerly known as Marathon Digital, bought 1,292 BTC for approximately $98.6 million, according to Crypto Briefing. The purchase, disclosed this week, lifts the company’s treasury to more than 36,500 coins and makes it one of the few large miners still adding bitcoin while the market waits on the Federal Reserve.
The implied average price sits near $76,300 per coin, close to where bitcoin has traded since the Senate blocked the CLARITY Act in a 49-50 vote on Tuesday. Bitcoin fell as low as $75,000 after that vote and later stabilized near $76,000. Spot ETFs saw roughly $450 million in outflows in a single day, and about $571 million in long positions were liquidated across the market.
A miner holding through the drawdown
MARA is the largest bitcoin holder among publicly traded miners. Before this purchase, trackers put its holdings at 35,303 BTC, worth about $2.81 billion at recent prices. The new 1,292 coins are a small increment relative to that total, but the signal matters more than the size: the company is still accumulating while some rivals pivot away from mining entirely.
The purchase lands in a difficult quarter for the business. Marathon reported a net loss of $611.3 million in Q2 2026, against net income of $808.2 million a year earlier. Revenue fell 26.7 percent year over year to $174.9 million, and management attributed about $65.9 million of that decline to a 28 percent drop in bitcoin’s average price during the quarter. Roughly $343 million of the net loss came from unrealized mark-to-market accounting on digital assets, a reminder of how fair-value rules amplify swings in a down market.
Analysts watching the miner sector noted the market is split between two models. One camp treats mining sites as infrastructure assets and rents the power to AI companies. Morgan Stanley began coverage of the group this year, calling Cipher Mining and TeraWulf buys while rating MARA a sell on that exact logic. Marathon is running both plays at once, which is why its bitcoin treasury decisions get read as a statement about which business it believes in. Hyperscale Data, by comparison, switched off all bitcoin miners at its Michigan site on September 1 to clear power for an AI deployment, an example of the other path.
Funding the stack with borrowed bitcoin
Marathon has also changed how it pays for growth. After the quarter closed, it entered two bitcoin-backed credit facilities with Coinbase and Two Prime at a weighted average cost of debt of 7.56 percent, for $600 million in incremental borrowings. The proceeds support the Long Ridge acquisition, a step in the company’s shift toward AI and digital power infrastructure alongside mining. Management told investors the deal should add about $144 million in annualized EBITDA, with roughly 70 percent of output under long-term contracts.
The company’s energized hashrate reached 70.3 EH/s in Q2, up 22 percent year over year, and it mined 2,422 BTC in the quarter, or 26.6 per day. Cost per kilowatt-hour at owned sites was $0.04, among the lower figures in the sector. Daily cost per petahash came in at $27.7, down 4 percent from a year earlier, so the marginal economics of mining remain workable even at current prices. The company ended the quarter with $421.3 million in cash and roughly $2.5 billion in combined cash and bitcoin.
Where Marathon ranks among treasuries
Corporate bitcoin treasuries remain dominated by Strategy, but the gap below it is crowded, and Marathon’s revised stack places it fourth among public companies.
| Company | BTC held | Approx. value |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy (MSTR) | 845,050 | $63.7 billion cost basis |
| Twenty One Capital | 43,514 | $3.46 billion |
| Metaplanet | 43,000 | $3.42 billion |
| MARA Holdings | 36,595 incl. new buy | $2.8 billion+ |
Strategy itself has paused purchases for consecutive weeks and redirected cash into buybacks of its STRC preferred stock, spending $139.3 million on 1,424,067 shares in the latest reported week after $176.3 million the week before. Its bitcoin holdings stayed at 845,050 BTC, with a $5.1 billion USD reserve on hand. Earlier this month the company doubled its preferred buyback authorization to $2 billion and signaled willingness to sell bitcoin to fund dividends and interest payments if needed, a shift that sent its shares higher as investors welcomed the reassurance on preferred-stock obligations.
That contrast, one giant pausing while a miner buys, frames the current debate over whether digital asset treasury companies become net sellers under pressure. Citigroup flagged the worry in July when it cut its 12-month bitcoin target to $82,000 from $112,000 and assumed zero net ETF inflows over the coming year. The bank noted that even modest BTC sales by Strategy had amplified fears across the market.
Macro conditions add to the timing questions. Futures price a 94 percent chance of a quarter-point Fed hike on Wednesday, which would be the first since 2023, and the 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.04 percent, its highest since 2007. Oil trades above $105 and risk assets have sold off for most of the past week. Coinglass maps $1.72 billion in long liquidations below $74,860, so a break of that level would hit leveraged holders hard, while $832 million in shorts sit above $82,084.
For Marathon, the bet is straightforward: buy the dip, borrow against the stack rather than dilute equity, and hold through a cycle that has already taken bitcoin from an October record above $126,000 to the mid-$70,000s. Fidelity’s research arm said this month it is unsure the bear market is over, and Jefferies noted mining profitability fell more than 7 percent in September as the network hashrate rose against sliding prices. Whether miners keep adding on that backdrop will shape the next leg of the corporate demand story, and Marathon just voted with its own balance sheet.