MARA Repays $750M Bitcoin Loans After Selling 13,597 BTC Near $81,000

MARA Holdings has turned a large slice of its bitcoin stack into a cleaner balance sheet. In its third-quarter 2026 shareholder letter, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on November 9, the bitcoin miner said it sold 13,597 BTC after September 30 at an average price of about $81,039, raising roughly $1.1 billion.

Most of that cash went straight to lenders. MARA used $750 million to fully repay its bitcoin-collateralized term loans, and the repayment returned 17,477 BTC that had been locked up as collateral. The company says less than 5% of its bitcoin holdings are now loaned or pledged.

What the MARA earnings report showed

The headline numbers pull in two directions. Revenue fell 35% to $164.2 million in the third quarter, from $252.4 million a year earlier. Net income, however, climbed to $632.1 million, or $1.28 per share, from $123.1 million. Adjusted EBITDA reached $857.7 million against $395.6 million a year ago.

The gap between those lines is bitcoin itself. MARA booked an $885.3 million unrealized mark-to-market gain on its holdings during the quarter, valued at a September 30 spot price of $83,556. In other words, the coins the company kept did more for its reported profit than the coins it mined.

Operationally, the fleet kept growing. Energized hashrate rose 18% year over year to 71.2 exahashes per second, and MARA won 644 blocks, up from 633 a year earlier. It mined 2,247 BTC in the quarter and bought none. Purchased energy cost per bitcoin was $39,674, close to the $39,235 of a year ago, at about $0.04 per kilowatt-hour.

How much bitcoin MARA sold this year

MARA has been a steady seller in 2026. The letter puts nine-month sales at about 26,984 BTC for $1.9 billion. Of that, 15,133 BTC went toward retiring roughly $1.0 billion of convertible notes. Third-quarter sales were smaller, at 3,891 BTC for an average of about $75,300.

The post-quarter sale is the big one. At 13,597 BTC, it is more than six times what the company mined in the whole third quarter.

Even after the third-quarter sales, MARA held 34,012 BTC on September 30, worth about $2.8 billion. Of those, 14,752 were unrestricted, 1,408 were loaned and 17,852 were pledged. The pledged coins are the ones that have now largely come back to MARA’s books free of liens.

Borrowing near $64,000, selling near $81,000

The timing is what MARA wants investors to notice. The company says it borrowed against its bitcoin while the asset traded around $64,000, mostly to fund its purchase of the Long Ridge power plant, and then repaid the loans with coins sold near $81,000. MARA estimates the net benefit of that sequence at $170.0 million.

That figure is MARA’s own estimate, and the chart shows why the window mattered. Bitcoin spent much of June and July near or below $64,000, then traded above $80,000 for most of late September and October. By November 10 it had eased back to about $74,600, below MARA’s average sale price.

Since the start of 2026 the company has cut total debt by $1.4 billion, or 37%. Cash and equivalents stood at $946.5 million on September 30, up from $547.1 million at the end of 2025, and cash plus bitcoin came to about $3.8 billion.

Not a pivot away from bitcoin

The sales fund a broader plan. MARA describes itself as becoming an energy-backed digital infrastructure company spanning power, land and compute. It received federal approval for the Long Ridge natural gas plant, which is authorized to sell 485 MW and is expected to reach its full 505 MW in the first half of 2027. It also secured rights to develop a Texas site in Matagorda County with up to 2 gigawatts of capacity, and its Exaion unit signed a four-year, $79 million GPU contract.

Management was direct about where bitcoin sits in that picture. “It is important to remember that this is not a pivot away from bitcoin,” the letter says. “Bitcoin remains our operating foundation and a flexible way to monetize power while we develop higher-value infrastructure opportunities.” Elsewhere it adds: “While markets have declined, bitcoin has remained resilient.”

Investors should expect more selling. MARA says it intends to keep using bitcoin to build cash for AI infrastructure, to cover the puts on its convertible notes that become exercisable next year, and for possible buybacks. After quarter-end, the board authorized a share repurchase program of up to $500 million.

Why this matters for bitcoin holders

A miner selling 13,597 BTC is supply that the market had to absorb, and it landed during a stretch when the price was already cooling.

There is also a constructive reading. The coins were sold into a strong market, not dumped in a forced liquidation, and the result is a miner with far less leverage tied to the bitcoin price. Loans secured by bitcoin can force sales at the worst possible moment when prices fall. With less than 5% of its holdings now loaned or pledged, that particular risk at MARA has largely gone away.

The quarter also shows how bitcoin is working as a treasury asset for a public company. MARA borrowed against it, sold part of it at a higher price to settle the debt, and still kept a large position that generated most of its reported profit. For a sector that spent years selling every coin it mined, that is a different kind of balance sheet.

Miners elsewhere are making similar calls. Core Scientific sold bitcoin as AI colocation revenue grew, while BitFuFu kept adding to its holdings. Network conditions matter too, as our look at the November difficulty cut and hashrate explains, and our 200-day moving average analysis shows where the broader trend stands.

The full filing, including the shareholder letter and earnings release, is available on SEC EDGAR. The next tests are the Long Ridge closing and how much more bitcoin MARA chooses to sell ahead of next year’s convertible note puts.