MARA Dumps $1.5B in Bitcoin as Miner Trades Treasury Hoard for AI Power Bet

Bitcoin Magazine MARA Dumps $1.5B in Bitcoin as Miner Trades Treasury Hoard for AI Power Bet MARA Holdings has begun to shed its pure-play bitcoin miner identity, unloading $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in the first quarter as it refocuses on power infrastructure and artificial intelligence data centers. The shift comes as the company reports weaker financial results and leans on its bitcoin treasury to retire debt and fund a large energy acquisition in Ohio. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $174.6 million, an 18% drop from a year earlier, and a net loss of about $1.3 billion. Management tied that result to a roughly $1 billion negative change in the fair value of its digital assets after a double-digit slide in the bitcoin price over the period. MARA produced 2,247 bitcoin in the quarter and lifted energized hashrate 33% year over year to 72.2 exahash per second, but those operational gains did not offset the mark-to-market hit on its holdings. To strengthen its balance sheet, MARA sold about $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin during the quarter, including a $1.1 billion block near the end of the period used to repurchase convertible notes. The miner sold 20,880 bitcoin and ended the quarter with 35,303 coins, down from 38,689 earlier in the year. That sale pushed the company from the second- to the fourth-largest publicly traded holder of bitcoin, according to Bitcoin Treasuries data. Management framed the move as a use of bitcoin as “ammunition” on the balance sheet rather than an untouchable reserve. MARA is pivoting from bitcoin to AI Even as it continues to mine, MARA is signaling a strategic pivot away from aggressive expansion of dedicated mining capacity. In its earnings statement the company said it does not expect to make large purchases of new ASIC miners, a sharp contrast with the playbook miners used during the last cycle to chase hashrate growth. Instead, MARA is steering capital toward energy and data infrastructure that can support both b...