The biggest Bitcoin miner in America just sold a huge chunk of its Bitcoin, and it is not done yet. MARA Holdings sold 13,597 Bitcoin for about $1.1 billion in the six weeks after September 30, according to its third-quarter shareholder letter, filed on Monday. That is roughly 40 percent of the 34,012 Bitcoin the company held at the end of September, sold in about six weeks. The company says it plans to keep selling. For a firm that pledged in July 2024 to hold every Bitcoin it mined, that is quite a reversal. MARA sold six times as much Bitcoin in those six weeks as it mined during the entire third quarter, which tells you this was not about clearing out a little extra inventory. This was a deliberate change of strategy, and it says a lot about where the mining business is heading.
The Loans Are Gone, and So Is the Old Strategy
The main reason for the sale is simple: MARA had debt, and it wanted it gone. The company used $750 million of the proceeds to repay all of its Bitcoin-backed term loans, releasing 17,477 coins it had pledged as collateral. Less than 5 percent of MARA's remaining Bitcoin is now lent out or pledged, down from 57 percent at the end of September. Those loans were taken out in August to help fund the planned purchase of Long Ridge, a natural-gas power business that MARA expects to close in the coming weeks. The rest of the money is earmarked for AI infrastructure, more debt repayments and a possible share buyback, and MARA has already authorized a $500 million buyback program. The shareholder letter is blunt about the plan: "We intend to continue using bitcoin to build cash for purposes such as AI infrastructure opportunities."
The numbers behind the quarter help explain why. Third-quarter revenue fell 35 percent to $164 million, down from $252.4 million a year earlier. MARA still reported a $632 million profit for the quarter, but that was driven by an $885 million gain on the value of its Bitcoin holdings, not by the mining business itself. Mining is getting harder and less profitable, while power assets and data centers look like the better bet. MARA sold 26,984 Bitcoin in the first nine months of 2026, worth about $1.9 billion, and the post-September sales bring its total for the year to more than 40,000 coins. After the latest sale, MARA holds about 20,415 Bitcoin.
MARA Is Not the Only One Selling
The wider picture makes the MARA sale look less like a one-off and more like a trend. Blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain reported on November 10 that 14 publicly traded companies have sold a combined 108,247 Bitcoin so far in 2026, worth about $8.08 billion. MARA leads the list with 40,581 coins sold, worth about $3.03 billion, followed by Riot Platforms with 20,264 coins worth about $1.51 billion and Bitdeer Technologies with 10,553 coins worth about $787 million. Miners account for most of the selling, which makes sense: they are the companies sitting on the biggest stockpiles, and many of them are now chasing the same AI data center opportunity that MARA is.
What It Means for Bitcoin
For traders, the obvious question is what all this selling does to the price. Bitcoin was trading around $73,700 on Tuesday, down about 41 percent from its all-time high near $126,000, and it has been under pressure for weeks. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have now lost money for four straight days, and BlackRock's IBIT has posted seven straight sessions of redemptions. A steady stream of miner selling is one more source of supply hitting a market that is already short of buyers.
MARA sold its coins at an average of about $81,039, well above the current price, which means it sold into strength rather than panic. And the company is not exiting Bitcoin. It still holds more than 20,000 coins, and it is using the cash to buy power assets and build data centers that could make the company worth more in the long run.
The takeaway is that the biggest Bitcoin miners are no longer acting like Bitcoin holders. They are acting like companies with bills to pay and a new business to build, and they are willing to sell their Bitcoin to do it. That is a real change from the hoarding era, and it is one more headwind for a market that already has plenty of them. If you hold Bitcoin, the miners selling is not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to pay attention. The people who create the supply are telling you, in plain numbers, that they would rather have cash right now.
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Author: Cedric Holloway
New York Newsroom
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