MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) reported a sharp rise in third-quarter profit driven largely by unrealized gains on its bitcoin holdings, even as mining revenue declined, and followed the period by selling a substantial portion of its bitcoin to repay debt while advancing a shift toward AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.
The company posted net income of approximately $632 million, or $1.28 per diluted share, for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, up from $123.1 million a year earlier.
Results were boosted by roughly $885 million in fair-value gains on digital assets and related receivables.
Revenue, however, fell 35% year over year to $164.2 million from $252.4 million, reflecting lower average realized bitcoin prices that reduced block reward income by about 37%.
Operational metrics showed modest progress on the mining side: the firm produced 2,247 bitcoin, energized hashrate reached 71.2 exahashes per second (an 18% increase from the prior year), and cost per petahash per day improved slightly.
As of quarter-end, MARA held 34,012 bitcoin (including receivables) alongside $946.5 million in cash and equivalents. Year-to-date, it has cut total debt by $1.4 billion, or 37%.
After the quarter closed, MARA sold 13,597 bitcoin for roughly $1.1 billion at an average price near $81,000.
It applied $750 million of the proceeds to fully repay bitcoin-collateralized term loans, releasing approximately 17,477 coins that had been pledged as collateral. This left less than 5% of remaining holdings loaned or pledged, down sharply from prior levels.
The loans had helped fund the pending acquisition of the Long Ridge natural-gas power plant; the company estimated a net benefit of around $170 million from the timing of the borrowing and subsequent sale.
Management indicated it plans to continue liquidating bitcoin as needed to build cash for AI infrastructure projects, cover potential obligations on convertible notes, and support a newly authorized share repurchase program of up to $500 million.
These moves align with MARA’s broader evolution from a primarily bitcoin-mining operator into an energy-backed digital infrastructure provider.
The firm is prioritizing customer leases and free cash flow generation across its powered sites, with advanced discussions for data-center tenants, progress on the Long Ridge transaction (including recent FERC approval), and expansion via units such as Exaion, which recently signed a multi-year GPU-as-a-service contract.
Energized capacity currently stands near 1.9 GW with a path toward substantially more.Comparable publicly traded peers have followed similar paths.
Riot Platforms sold more than 20,000 bitcoin year-to-date for approximately $1.5 billion, primarily to fund data-center development, reducing its holdings to about 2,418 bitcoin by quarter-end.
It reported third-quarter revenue of $181.4 million (roughly flat year over year) while announcing large powered-land leases for AI workloads, including a major agreement covering 910 MW at its Corsicana site that contributes to roughly $38 billion in long-term contracted revenue across its portfolio.
Hut 8 reported third-quarter revenue of $71.1 million (down from the prior year) and net income elevated by digital asset gains; it sold roughly 3,100 bitcoin in the quarter and subsequent period to fund about $250 million in share repurchases while commercializing AI data center campuses that bring expected base-term contract value across its portfolio to approximately $26.6 billion.
Other operators in the sector have likewise monetized bitcoin reserves to finance power assets, GPU deployments, and tenant contracts rather than solely accumulating the cryptocurrency.
Across the industry, former pure-play miners are increasingly treating bitcoin holdings as a liquid treasury asset to be sold strategically.
With post-halving mining economics tighter and AI/HPC demand for power and land rising sharply, companies are shifting capital toward contracted infrastructure that can deliver more stable, higher-margin cash flows.
Bitcoin mining remains a foundation for many—providing cash flow and optionality on energy assets—but the emphasis has moved toward maximizing the value of megawatts through leases, power generation, and compute services. This trend reduces balance-sheet exposure to bitcoin price swings while positioning the firms as infrastructure providers rather than solely digital-asset producers.
