MARA Holdings Sells $1.6 Billion in Bitcoin and Trims Treasury Holdings

MARA sold roughly $1.6 billion of bitcoin in the first half of 2026, disposing of 23,093 coins at an average price of about $70,631 each. For a company that spent the prior three years positioning its balance sheet as a bitcoin accumulation vehicle, a sale of that size is a strategic reversal, not a routine treasury operation.

Management has framed the proceeds as expansion funding, directed at energy infrastructure and at converting mining capacity toward artificial intelligence and high-performance compute workloads. That is the same pivot several listed miners have attempted as AI data center demand outbids proof-of-work economics for the same power interconnects, and it changes what a MARA share is exposed to: less pure bitcoin beta, more contracted compute revenue.

Separately, the company pledged 18,750 bitcoin as collateral for $600 million in loans to fund the same buildout. The combination of selling coins outright and borrowing against what remains says management wants capital now without a dilutive equity raise. The risk is symmetric: a pledged-coin structure amplifies losses if bitcoin falls before the AI conversion generates revenue, while a rally would leave the sold coins looking expensive. Watch the next quarterly filing for remaining treasury coin count and for signed compute contracts, which is the only evidence that the pivot is real rather than announced.

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