MARA sells $1.1B in Bitcoin to buy back debt at 9% discount

MARA Holdings sold 15,133 Bitcoin for roughly $1.1 billion in March to buy back $1 billion of zero-coupon convertible notes at a discount, reducing its convertible debt by roughly 30%.

MARA Holdings sold more than $1 billion of Bitcoin in March to repurchase convertible debt at a discount, using its BTC holdings to reduce leverage, the company said Thursday.

In a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the largest listed US Bitcoin miner said it would buy back about $1 billion of zero-coupon convertible notes due 2030 and 2031 for roughly $913 million in cash, capturing about $88 million in savings, or close to a 9% discount to par. 

The company said it sold 15,133 Bitcoin (BTC) for around $1.1 billion between March 4 and March 25 to fund the transactions, which it said will cut its outstanding convertible debt by about 30% to roughly $2.3 billion once the deals close at the end of the month. According to Bitcointreasuries.net, MARA now holds 38,689 BTC on its public balance sheet.

MARA’s chairman and chief executive officer, Fred Thiel, commented in a release that the transaction enhanced the company’s “financial flexibility” and increased its “strategic optionality” as MARA expands “beyond pure-play Bitcoin mining into digital energy and AI/HPC infrastructure.”

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MARA’s premarket share price reacted positively to the news, rising from yesterday’s close of $8.25 to $9.29, a gain of around 12.6%, and traded at $8.74 (+5.56%) at the time of writing, according to data from Yahoo Finance.

The move follows a $1.7 billion net loss in the fourth quarter of 2025, driven largely by non-cash fair-value adjustments on MARA’s Bitcoin holdings. At the time, MARA pushed back against speculation that it was quietly selling down its BTC holdings, saying it continued to view Bitcoin as a strategic treasury asset while actively managing its balance sheet.

MARA is part of a broader shift among crypto miners seeking more stable revenue streams, redeploying energy and infrastructure toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. The company recently agreed to acquire a majority stake in Exaion’s AI-focused data centers, and peers are making similar moves.

Bitdeer sold down its Bitcoin treasury to zero in February as it pivots toward infrastructure and service‑based revenues in cloud and AI compute, while Canaan has invested in US mining sites in Texas to run both Bitcoin mining and AI workloads from the same energy-intensive facilities.

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Source: CoinTelegraph