MARA Holdings buys $1.1B more Bitcoin, hits industry-first 50 EH/s

Bitcoin mining heavyweight MARA Holdings Inc. bought another 11,774 Bitcoin for $1.1 billion on Dec. 10, while its hashrate exceeded 50 exahashes per second (EH/s) — an industry first.MARA purchased its latest haul from zero-coupon convertible note offering from late last month, snapping up the 11,774 Bitcoin at an average purchase price of $96,000, it said in a Dec. 10 X post.As of Dec. 9, MARA held 40,435 Bitcoin, worth $3.92 billion at its current price of around $97,000.MARA has made a 12.3% “BTC Yield” so far in the fourth quarter and 47.6% so far this year, according to a Dec. 9 filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.It uses BTC Yield as a key performance indicator to measure the percentage change between its Bitcoin holdings and its assumed fully diluted shares outstanding.In July, MARA shifted to a new treasury policy to retain all Bitcoin it mines and adopt a range of capital market instruments to bolster its Bitcoin reserves, similar to MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin playbook.MARA’s hashrate reaches 50 EH/sMARA also reported doubling its energized hashrate in 2024 to reach its end-of-year target of 50 EH/s — making it the first public Bitcoin miner to cross the milestone.“Mission accomplished … but why stop here,” MARA’s CEO Fred Thiel posted in response to MARA’s X post.“Stay tuned as we have more miners on the shelf and we will just keep on adding using our existing capacity.”MARA’s hashrate was 36.9 EH/s at the end of the third quarter — meaning it’s added at least 13.1 EH/s since then.Related: Bitcoin ASIC maker Bitmain expands production line into USMARA (MARA) shares closed down 4.4% to $22.81 on Dec. 10 and has only seen a slight gain of just over 1% after-hours, Google Finance data shows.MARA’s stock is down 0.55% this year after it was one of the industry’s best performers in the 2023 market rebound, rising 586% over last year.Bitcoin is currently trading at $97,090, down 6.6% since Bitcoin soared to a new all-time high of $104,000 on Dec. 5.