Crypto
crypto

MARA rises after soundly beating earnings expectations

bitcoin miner MARA Holdings, the second-largest corporate bitcoin holder, with 50,000 bitcoin, reported second-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates.

The stock popped 4% in after-hours trading.

The company reported revenue of $238.5 million, a 64% increase from the previous quarter and above the consensus estimate of $227.9 million, according to FactSet.

For the second quarter, MARA reported surprisingly positive earnings per share of $1.84, while analysts had expected a loss of $0.07 per share.

Yesterday, MARA announced that it had completed a $950 million offering of 0.00% convertible senior notes due in 2032, partly to acquire additional bitcoin.  

JPMorgan analysts upgraded MARA yesterday to “overweight” from “neutral,” saying that it has “the most valuable mining operation (~$2.5bn), primarily owed to their industry-leading scale (targeting 75 EH/s by YE25).”

“As we continue to scale and diversify our business, we believe that MARA’s value extends well beyond any single aspect of our business,” CEO Fred Thiel said in the shareholder letter. “Our vertically integrated mining operations, large BTC treasury, budding international energy partnerships, and early AI infrastructure investments each contribute distinct and measurable value. When viewed through a sum-of-the-parts lens, we believe the market has not fully recognized the intrinsic worth and long-term potential of our business.”

More Crypto

See all Crypto
$11.4B

The FBI revealed in a Monday press release that Americans submitted 181,565 complaints of schemes involving cryptocurrency and reported losses totaling around $11.4 billion last year, a 22% increase from 2024.

The age range most affected were people older than 60. Those in this category had the highest crypto complaint count at 44,555 with losses at $4.4 billion, per the annual report from the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a division of the FBI tasked with gathering intelligence on cybercrime.

One cybercrime the report pointed to was cryptocurrency investment fraud, which are sophisticated long-term scams using psychological manipulation, an appearance of legitimacy, and exploitation of cryptocurrencies to deceive victims into investing large sums of money. 

“These scams are largely perpetrated by organized criminal enterprises based in Southeast Asia using victims of human trafficking as forced labor to run the scam operations,” per the report. 

The FBI report comes as the crypto ecosystem is still reeling from a recent $270 million exploit that was planned six months in the making, a change from the initial estimate of multiple weeks.

crypto

Aave sinks as another service provider leaves

The native token of the largest lending protocol in DeFi has shed roughly $163 million in market capitalization, dropping nearly 11% over the past 24 hours, after news that another service provider is leaving. 

Chaos Labs on Monday announced it was stepping down as a risk manager for the Aave DAO, citing concerns over V4 of the protocol and the recent exit of other core contributors. 

The risk management firm, which has been contributing to Aave since November 2022, decided to end its engagement with the protocol in part because of a “fundamental misalignment on how risk should be managed at Aave,” Chaos Labs CEO and founder Omer Goldberg said on X. 

The V4 protocol introduced a new smart contract code base. “When that architecture is rewritten from scratch, the risk infrastructure must follow. As a result, while the scope changed materially, the resourcing did not. Aave Labs may be comfortable with those trade-offs. We are not,” Goldberg stated.  

Chaos Labs’ termination comes after service providers Aave Chan Initiative and Bored Ghosts Developing Labs announced leaving due to centralization concerns with Aave Labs, which is headed by the protocol’s founder, Stani Kulechov. 

In response to Chaos Labs’ recent decision, Kulechov said, “There is no disruption to the Aave Protocol, its smart contracts, asset listings, or network deployments.” Kulechov added that Aave was not supportive of several elements of Chaos Labs’ initial proposal, such as a higher-risk management payment of $8 million. 

Aave has a total value locked of over $24 billion. V4 went live at the end of March and has seen around $10 million in deposits in the first week.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC. Futures and event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC.