According to Woofun AI, Bitcoin mining giant MARA Holdings (MARA.US) completed an unprecedented asset monetization in just six weeks, selling 13,597 BTC at an average price of around $81,039 each, for a total value of $1.1 billion.
This sell-off was equivalent to 40% of the 34,012 BTC it held at the end of September, and six times its total mining volume for the entire third quarter. MARA made it clear that this huge amount of money will mainly be used to build artificial intelligence infrastructure, repay debts, and possible share buybacks, marking a shift in its strategic focus from simple mining accumulation to diversified capital operations.
According to data compiled by Woofun AI, the flow of funds showed obvious deleveraging characteristics. Of this, $750 million was used to repay loans secured by BTC, directly releasing 17,477 BTC from collateral. This caused the percentage of the company's remaining BTC to be loaned or used as collateral plummeted from 57% at the end of September to less than 5%. The loans were first applied for in August to finance the acquisition of natural gas power generation company Long Ridge, and MARA chose to pay off the debt by selling off BTC before the acquisition was completed. Looking back at history, MARA promised to keep all mining proceeds two years ago and formulated a financial policy to maintain mining and purchasing BTC in July 2024, but the sale of newly mined BTC was permitted from 2025, and further relaxed to allow the sale of accumulated holdings in 2026. In the first nine months of 2026, the total number of BTC sold reached 26,984. With this transaction, the total number of units sold for the whole year has exceeded 40,000.
In terms of financial performance, although third-quarter revenue fell 35% to $164 million due to the industry environment, MARA still achieved a profit of $632 million, mainly due to the $885 million accounting revenue brought about by the BTC price increase in the quarter. In addition to funding AI infrastructure, the funding will also address early repayment pressure required by some bondholders starting next year, as well as a stock repurchase plan of up to $500 million approved by the board of directors. MARA is expected to complete the acquisition of Long Ridge within the next few weeks. The power plant has 485 megawatts of power generation capacity, and the surrounding land also provides conditions for the construction of a data center.
Additionally, MARA also owns the development rights for a plot of land with up to 2 gigawatts of power generation capacity in Texas. The goal is to sign two new data center leases before the end of the year, but it also warned that related negotiations may continue until 2027.
MARA's strategic transformation reveals the survival logic of traditional mining companies in the context of declining revenue: supporting energy-intensive AI transformation and debt restructuring by monetizing existing assets. This shift from “hoarding coins” to “using coins” has not only changed the company's balance sheet structure, but also heralds a deep binding between Web3 infrastructure and AI computing power requirements. As more mining companies face similar revenue pressure, using BTC reserves to expand the physical industry may become the norm, and the progress of the Long Ridge acquisition and the results of subsequent data center leasing negotiations will be key indicators for observing whether this trend can continue.