Marathon Sells $1.63B in Bitcoin in H1 2026 to Fund Growth and Debt Reduction

Headline: Marathon (MARA) Converts Much of Its Bitcoin Treasury into Cash — Sells $1.63B in H1 2026 While Reworking Its Digital-asset Playbook Marathon Digital (ticker: MARA) sold roughly 23,093 BTC for about $1.63 billion in the first half of 2026, according to its Aug. 6 Form 10-Q. The company has been actively turning a big slice of its Bitcoin treasury into liquidity to fund operations, infrastructure builds, acquisitions and debt reduction — while reshaping how it manages crypto on the balance sheet. Key takeaways - BTC sales and treasury position - MARA sold ~23,093 BTC in H1 2026 at an average price of $70,631. - By June 30 the company still held 35,577 BTC (fair value ≈ $2.08B based on a quarter-end BTC price of $58,524). - Holdings declined from 53,822 BTC at year-end 2025 and 49,951 BTC a year earlier; they were slightly up from 35,303 BTC at March 31. - The bulk of the H1 reduction happened in Q1 when MARA sold 20,880 BTC for ≈ $1.5B. In Q2 it produced 2,422 BTC and sold 2,213 BTC at an average of $73,078. - Policy shift: treasury management - After permitting sales of newly mined BTC in 2025, MARA in 2026 expanded its policy to allow sales of existing balance-sheet BTC. - The revised digital-asset strategy lets MARA treat Bitcoin as both a long-term investment and an active liquidity source — using sales, lending, structured trading and collateralized financing as needed. - Cash flow and uses of proceeds - Bitcoin sales generated the largest source of investing cash in the period: net cash provided by investing activities was about $1.47B (vs. $337M used in H1 2025). - Spending from those proceeds included $94.3M on property and equipment and $61.1M (net of cash acquired) on Exaion and Meerkat acquisitions, supporting compute and infrastructure that can host mining, AI and HPC workloads. - Operating activities consumed $471.3M in H1 (up from $378.9M a year earlier), driven mainly by lower revenue and higher operating costs. - Debt reduction and financing activity - Financing activities used ≈ $1.12B in H1, including $912.8M to partially repay convertible notes (March 2030 and June 2031) and $350M to repay a prior credit line; a $150M credit facility partly offset outflows. - MARA repurchased about $1B of its 0% convertible senior notes via private transactions, cutting total debt from $3.6B at Dec. 31, 2025 to roughly $2.4B by June 30. - Lending, collateralization and new credit lines - As of June 30, 4,742 BTC were loaned out and 4,528 BTC were pledged as collateral, leaving 26,307 unrestricted BTC (fair value ≈ $1.5B). Bitcoin lending generated $10.7M of interest income in H1. - After quarter-end, on Aug. 4 MARA pledged 18,750 BTC to secure new borrowing arrangements that provide $600M of incremental funding: - A $450M facility with Coinbase Credit (includes $300M new funding and refinancing of MARA’s $150M line); floating interest = midpoint of fed funds target range + 3.875%; maturity Aug. 4, 2028, with automatic one-year extension unless cancelled. - A $300M term loan from Two Prime at a fixed 7.65% annual rate; maturity Aug. 3, 2028. - Both facilities require MARA to maintain collateral ratios and may demand additional pledged assets if margin levels deteriorate. - Financial results and market impact - Revenue for the six months ended June 30 was $349.5M (down from $452.4M a year earlier). - MARA recorded a net loss of $1.87B in H1 2026 versus net income of $274.8M in the prior-year period. - A major contributor to the swing was Bitcoin price movement: the fair value of MARA’s BTC holdings fell about $1.4B in H1 (≈ $343M of that decline occurred in Q2). - Mining capacity and efficiency - Energized hashrate rose to 70.3 EH/s at June 30 from 57.4 EH/s a year earlier. - Miner efficiency improved to 17.3 J/TH from 18.3 J/TH. - Total energy capacity increased to 1.9 GW from 1.7 GW. - Strategic acquisitions and site expansion - MARA agreed on April 29 to buy 100% of Long Ridge Energy & Power in Hannibal, Ohio — a package that includes a 485 MW combined-cycle gas plant (expected to reach 505 MW in Q1 2027) and 1,600+ contiguous acres with water, fiber and rail access next to MARA’s existing data center. The transaction carries an enterprise value of about $1.5B, including up to roughly $900M of assumed debt. - Barclays has committed to a 364-day senior secured bridge facility up to $785M that can backstop part of the acquisition financing. - In July MARA announced it is acquiring over 1,200 acres in Matagorda County, Texas, with access to 1 GW of grid capacity by Oct. 2027 and up to 2 GW by Apr. 2028. MARA will work with Starwood Digital Ventures on site-specific JVs to develop HPC, flexible compute and mining capacity. - Balance sheet snapshot - As of June 30 MARA reported $421.3M in cash and cash equivalents and about $2.1B of Bitcoin, giving combined cash + digital assets of roughly $2.5B. - The company also had approximately $1.5B of unused capacity under its at-the-market equity program (no shares sold in H1 2026). Bottom line MARA’s H1 2026 activity shows a deliberate shift from hoarding BTC to actively monetizing and leveraging it — selling, lending and pledging coins to fund growth, shore up liquidity and reduce debt while expanding energy and compute footprints. The strategy increases near-term liquidity but exposes the company to market-price volatility and margin requirements tied to collateralized financing.