Bitcoin Mining Giant Marathon Has Loaned $730 Million in BTC

The world’s second largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, MARA, also known as Marathon Digital Holdings, has sold around 16% of its treasury.

In a production and mining operation update published on January 3, the company revealed that 7,377 BTC, worth about $730 million at current prices, have been “temporarily loaned out to third parties.”

His total deposit, including the loan, is 44,893 BTC as of December 31 and is worth a whopping $4.4 billion.

“As a miner that mines and buys Bitcoin, the hybrid approach gives us significant flexibility to acquire Bitcoin at attractive prices,” the firm stated before adding:

“Also, it allows us to take advantage of market conditions by buying BTC during price dips, optimizing our acquisition cost.”

“Significant interest” in BTC loans

MARA did not disclose the identities of the BTC loan recipients, but Investor Relations Director Robert Samuels said the loans are “short-term arrangements with well-established third parties.”

The company is generating a “modest single-digit yield” and has been actively engaged in these types of loans throughout 2024, he added.

He said there was “significant interest” in MARA’s Bitcoin lending program. “The long-term goal is to generate a sufficient return to offset operating expenses,” he explained.

There has been significant interest @MARAHoldings BTC Loan Program, so here are a few more details:
– It focuses on short-term agreements with consolidated third parties.
– Generates a modest single-digit return.
– It has been active throughout 2024.
– In the long term…

— Robert Samuels (@RobSamuelsIR) January 3, 2025

The company also reported that it mined 9,457 BTC and acquired an additional 22,065 BTC at an average price of $87,205 during 2024.

“We exceeded our year-end hash rate target of 50 EH/s while improving the efficiency of our fleet to 20 J/TH,” said Fred Thiel, president and CEO of MARA.

Shares of the company ( MARA ) rose 14% Friday to hit $19.73 in after-hours trading. However, apart from a few spikes, it remained range-bound throughout 2024.

In December, MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor indicated that MARA would be the next among Bitcoin companies to join the Nasdaq 100.

Perspectives of the mining ecosystem

Bitcoin mining is a fundamentally tough business with a lot of competition and block grants that are halved every four years, most recently in April, which reduced the block reward to 3,125 BTC .

Bitcoin’s hashrate, or the network’s computing power, hit an all-time high of 817 EH/s on January 3, according to Blockchain.com.

Meanwhile, the hash price, a metric that quantifies how much a miner can expect to earn with a specific amount of hash power, remains low at $0.057 per Terahash per second per day, according to the Hashrate Index.

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