Wind turbines operate in a field at sunrise (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Marathon Digital is going big on bitcoin, taking a page from MicroStrategy

The race to accumulate bitcoin is heating up, and Mara seems to have the wind in its sails.

12/3/24 1:36PM

Bitcoin-mining company MARA Holdings has been going big in every way it can lately, aggressively adding to its bitcoin stockpile as prices are skyrocketing. Today, the company announced it bought a wind farm in Texas “to convert underutilized sustainable resources into economic value, achieve near-zero energy cost, and enable broader renewable energy deployment.”

Additionally, the press release said, “The site will utilize last-generation ASIC mining hardware that would have otherwise been written off or sold into the secondary market,” reducing bitcoin-production costs and enabling the hardware “to continue operating profitably beyond their normal lifecycle, utilizing wind power.” The wind-farm purchase follows the company’s upsizing of its senior-note offering to $850 million (with a $150 million option) on December 2 from the original oversubscribed $700 million. The proceeds will be “primarily used to acquire bitcoin.”

Marathon Digital has also added 6,484 bitcoins “for approximately $618.3 million in cash at an average price of approximately $95,352 per bitcoin” just between October 1 and November 30, 2024, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. This brings Marathon’s total bitcoin stash to 34,959 as of November 30, gaining 8,563 bitcoin through purchases and 12,965 bitcoin through mining this year.

Marathon’s hoard is still far behind that of uber bitcoin stockpiler MicroStrategy, which holds 279,420 bitcoins as of November 10, 2024.

Great work by MARA team and looking forward to chasing @saylor and watching $MSTR accumulate more BTC and seeing price move higher. Great for all #bitcoin investors. https://t.co/EOJ8IVEZDy
— Fred Thiel (@fgthiel) November 19, 2024

Marathon seems to be taking a page from MicroStrategy in buying bitcoin via convertible notes, “similar to what Michael Saylor has so successfully done,” Phillip Shoemaker, executive director of Identity.com, a nonprofit organization providing decentralized identity verification, told Sherwood News.

In turn, this might trigger other miners to follow suit.

“I should note that other bitcoin miners are looking at Mara as a sign of what to do next, and I think this will spur more demand for renewable energy — not just from other bitcoin miners but also from those who run AI data centers,” Shoemaker said.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a financial journalist who’s written for Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, and Business Insider, among others.

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New bitcoin AfterDark ETF will be bitcoin at night, Treasurys by day

Tidal Trust II submitted form N-1A with the SEC to register a bitcoin ETF designed to systemically capture the cryptocurrency’s overnight return profile, a time window that delivered a significant portion of bitcoin’s upside last year.

The Nicholas Bitcoin and Treasuries AfterDark ETF provides long bitcoin exposure during US overnight hours, from the closing bell until the following morning’s market open, when the fund intends to unwind its positions, according to a document filed with the SEC on Tuesday.

To gain that exposure, the ETF may use a number of methods, including bitcoin futures contracts, US-listed ETFs, or exchange-traded options on such bitcoin underlying funds. When the market is open and daytime trading is active, the fund’s portfolio will consist of US Treasury securities and other cash equivalents.

In 2024, most of bitcoin’s gains occurred after-hours, senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas reported:

We looked at this last year and found most of the gains are in fact after hours. Doesn't mean the ETFs aren't having impact. Some of this is positioning bc of the ETFs etc or derivatives based on flows etc etc. But yeah, bitcoin After Dark ETF could put up better reutrns, we'll… pic.twitter.com/BTpV51cQfl
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) December 9, 2025

The AfterDark ETF filing comes as bitcoin crossed $94,000 on Tuesday, rising 4.5% in the last 24 hours. Even though spot bitcoin ETFs saw nearly $60.5 million in outflows on Monday, the investment vehicles have a cumulative net inflow of $57.6 billion, per SoSoValue.

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