MARA Holdings has pledged 18,750 Bitcoin to secure $600 million in new financing, using roughly $1.2 billion of its cryptocurrency holdings as collateral as the company accelerates its expansion beyond Bitcoin mining into energy and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The financing consists of $300 million from Coinbase Credit and another $300 million from Two Prime Lending, significantly increasing the amount of MARA’s Bitcoin committed to lending and collateral arrangements.
The capital is intended to support the company’s broader infrastructure strategy, including energy acquisitions, Bitcoin mining operations and the development of AI and high-performance computing capacity. The financing comes as MARA pursues some of the largest infrastructure investments in its history, including its proposed acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power in Ohio.
The transaction illustrates a major evolution in MARA’s Bitcoin strategy. Rather than simply accumulating and holding BTC, the company is increasingly treating its cryptocurrency treasury as a source of financing that can be sold, lent or pledged to fund expansion.
MARA’s Bitcoin Becomes Infrastructure Collateral
Pledging 18,750 BTC allows MARA to access substantial liquidity without immediately selling the underlying cryptocurrency.
At approximately $64,000 per Bitcoin, the collateral is worth around $1.2 billion, meaning MARA is pledging roughly twice the value of the $600 million in new borrowing. That overcollateralization provides lenders with protection against Bitcoin volatility but introduces additional risk for MARA if BTC falls sharply.
Specific maintenance ratios and liquidation thresholds have not been publicly disclosed. Depending on the loan terms, a sufficiently severe Bitcoin decline could require MARA to contribute additional collateral, repay part of the borrowing or potentially face liquidation of pledged BTC.
That risk is increasingly relevant because MARA has already demonstrated a willingness to monetize its Bitcoin treasury.
During the first quarter of 2026, the company sold approximately $1.5 billion of Bitcoin, using much of the proceeds to repurchase more than $1 billion face value of convertible notes and reduce its credit line by $200 million. At March 31, MARA held 35,303 BTC, including 9,995 BTC that were loaned or pledged as collateral.
MARA has explicitly said it expects to continue monetizing Bitcoin opportunistically when doing so can provide liquidity or finance projects that management believes will create greater long-term shareholder value.
AI and Energy Become Central to MARA’s Strategy
The new financing comes as MARA attempts to transform itself from a predominantly Bitcoin-mining company into a vertically integrated energy and digital-infrastructure operator. One of the centerpieces is its planned $1.5 billion acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power from FTAI Infrastructure. The transaction includes a 505-megawatt combined-cycle gas power plant in Ohio and more than 1,600 contiguous acres for development.
MARA says the site has more than 1 gigawatt of total potential capacity, including existing mining infrastructure and a pathway toward as much as 600 gross MW of AI and critical IT workloads. The company expects the acquisition to increase its owned-and-operated capacity by approximately 65%.
The strategy reflects a broader shift across the Bitcoin-mining industry. Electricity has become an increasingly valuable resource as hyperscalers and AI developers compete for power capacity capable of supporting enormous data centers.
MARA believes its experience securing power for Bitcoin mining gives it an advantage in that market. The company describes Bitcoin mining as the operational foundation of its platform but increasingly sees AI and critical computing as higher-value uses for portions of its energy portfolio.
Its first-quarter filing lays out three priorities: owning and controlling low-cost energy, developing AI and digital infrastructure at scale, and retaining Bitcoin mining as the primary near-term monetization mechanism for those energy assets.
The $600 million financing therefore represents more than another Bitcoin-backed loan. It demonstrates how MARA is converting its cryptocurrency balance sheet into capital for physical infrastructure.
That strategy could allow the company to retain upside exposure to Bitcoin while avoiding additional equity issuance, but it also creates a tighter relationship between Bitcoin prices, leverage and MARA’s ambitious infrastructure investments.
With 18,750 BTC now securing the new financing, a significant portion of the company’s digital assets is effectively supporting its transformation into an energy and AI infrastructure business. MARA’s next phase will depend not only on how efficiently it mines Bitcoin, but on whether leveraging that Bitcoin can generate higher returns from the power and computing infrastructure being built around it.
