The sale raised about $1.1 billion at an average of $81,039 a coin, almost 40% of the bitcoin MARA held on September 30. Revenue fell 35% while an $885.3 million fair value gain on its digital assets carried net income to $632.1 million.
MARA Holdings sold 13,597 bitcoin for about $1.1 billion after its third quarter closed and used $750 million of the proceeds to fully repay its bitcoin-collateralized loans. The coins sold amount to almost 40% of the 34,012 bitcoin the company held on September 30. MARA announced the results on November 9 and held its earnings call the same afternoon.
The sales ran at an average of $81,039 a coin, according to the shareholder letter. Clearing the loans released 17,477 bitcoin that had been pledged as collateral, and the company said less than 5% of what it still holds is now loaned out or pledged. The 34,012 coins on the balance sheet at the end of September split into 14,752 unrestricted, 1,408 loaned and 17,852 pledged. The borrowing it has now unwound was $600 million of new capital and $150 million to refinance an existing facility, raised when bitcoin traded around $64,000, and it funded the planned purchase of Long Ridge Energy & Power in Ohio. Management put the net benefit of the financing and the sale at about $170 million once associated costs are counted.
Revenue fell 35% to $164.2 million from $252.4 million a year earlier. MARA attributed most of the $88.2 million decline to price rather than output: a 37% drop in the average price of the bitcoin it mined cut revenue by $94.8 million, offset by $11.7 million from producing more coins. Production rose 5% to 2,247 bitcoin, and the company won 644 blocks against 633 in the same quarter last year. Bitcoin fell below $74,000 on November 9 as liquidations passed $1 billion, a level below the $81,039 average MARA realized on the sale.
Net income came in at $632.1 million against $123.1 million a year earlier, and the increase is an accounting mark rather than money the business collected. MARA booked $885.3 million of fair value gains on digital assets and related receivables, up from $343.1 million a year earlier. That $542.2 million increase in paper gains is larger than the $509 million increase in net income, and the $885.3 million gain is more than five times the quarter's revenue. The figure reflects how the market value of the digital assets on its balance sheet moved over the quarter, not cash from mining and not revenue from leasing capacity. Adjusted EBITDA was $857.7 million, up from $395.6 million, and diluted earnings were $1.28 a share against $0.27.
For the mining operation itself, MARA put the average energy cost of producing one bitcoin at its own sites at $39,674, with power at four cents a kilowatt hour. That figure covers electricity alone. It leaves out depreciation on rigs, fees at third-party hosting sites and corporate overhead, so it is not an all-in cost per coin and does not describe the margin between what MARA spends and what it sells bitcoin for.
Energized hashrate reached 71.2 exahashes per second, up 18% year over year, across 1.9 gigawatts of energized capacity at nearly 20 sites on four continents. The company says it has a path to about 4.8 gigawatts. Total debt is down 37% since the start of the year, and the board has authorized up to $500 million of share repurchases.
Chief executive Fred Thiel used the shareholder letter to argue that the power capacity, rather than the coins, is what the company is now selling. “When we think about MARA’s future, the opportunity is bigger than monetizing the megawatt,” he wrote, describing a move “from power to infrastructure to compute.” He also wrote, “This is not a pivot away from bitcoin.” The Block reported that MARA’s attention has turned to signing customer leases and generating free cash flow.
Other large listed miners have moved the same way this quarter. Cipher’s mining revenue fell 71% while its AI leases brought in $5.9 million, and IREN expects to still be mining bitcoin in 2027 despite setting a December exit target. Hut 8 sold 2,148 bitcoin to fund $175 million of share buybacks rather than to clear debt. What separates MARA is the size of the sale against what it was holding: almost two coins in every five.
Its stock closed November 9 at $6.64, up 4.57%. MARA told shareholders it expects to keep selling bitcoin when it needs to cover financial commitments, investments and capital projects, having already sold about 26,984 coins for roughly $1.9 billion over the first nine months of the year, including 3,891 in the third quarter at an average of $75,300, before the 13,597 that followed.
