Bitcoin Miner Marathon Buys $618 Million Worth of BTC

Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital paid $618 million cash to acquire approximately 6,484 Bitcoin, the company said in a new SEC filing.

The Florida company appears to have bought near the top, paying an average of $95,352 per BTC including fees and expenses. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price has settled just below $95,000 after having peaked above $98,000 earlier this morning, according to CoinGecko data.

The company’s shareholders seem to like the sound of that news. As of Monday afternoon during EU trading hours, MARA shares were 1.9% higher than they were when trading closed on Friday afternoon.

Marathon’s stock, which trades on the Nasdaq, closed at $26.85 on Friday after losing 2%. But the Bitcoin buying news seems to have all but erased that dip.

The company also announced that start today it’s going to raise up to $700 million in private offerings to institutional buyers.

“MARA expects to use up to $50 million of the net proceeds from the sale of the notes to repurchase a portion of its existing convertible notes due 2026 (the ‘existing 2026 convertible notes’) in privately negotiated transactions with the remainder of the net proceeds to be used to acquire additional Bitcoin and for general corporate purposes,” it wrote in the SEC filing, “which may include working capital, strategic acquisitions, expansion of existing assets, and repayment of additional debt and other outstanding obligations.”

This isn’t the first time that Marathon would be issuing convertible notes to repurchase some of its debt and add to its Bitcoin treasury. In November, the Bitcoin miner announced an $850 million offer saying that it reserved the option to expand that offering to $1 billion.

The latest Bitcoin acquisition puts Marathon Digital’s corporate BTC treasury at $3.3 billion. That makes it the second-largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, although it’s a very distant second to laser-eyed juggernaut MicroStrategy.

The software company founded by Bitcoiner Michael Saylor has amassed nearly $37 billion worth of BTC, according to Bitcoin Treasuries.