MARA Pledges 18,750 BTC for $600 Million New Bitcoin-Backed Loans
MARA (NASDAQ: MARA) has secured $600 million of new debt after pledging 18,750 BTC, tapping its bitcoin reserves to help finance an expansion into power generation and AI infrastructure.
The Bitcoin mining completed the two term loans with Coinbase Credit and Two Prime Lending on Aug. 4, according to a quarterly filing on Thursday. The pledged tokens were valued at about $1.2 billion when the transactions closed.
The facilities have combined principal of $750 million because a $450 million Coinbase loan includes the refinancing of an existing $150 million credit line. Coinbase supplied $300 million of additional funding, while Two Prime provided a separate $300 million loan. Both facilities have been fully drawn.
The Coinbase debt carries a floating rate equal to the midpoint of the Federal Reserve’s target range plus 3.875 percentage points. That equates to 7.5% under the current 3.5%-to-3.75% range, which the Fed maintained on July 29. The loan matures on Aug. 4, 2028, with an automatic one-year extension unless either party cancels it.
Two Prime’s loan has a fixed rate of 7.65% and matures on Aug. 3, 2028. At current rates, the two facilities would generate about $56.7 million of annual interest expense if their principal remained unchanged.
The collateral was worth about 1.6 times the combined loan principal at closing. MARA must maintain required collateral levels and could be forced to pledge additional Bitcoin if the token’s price falls. Failure to meet a margin call would allow the lenders to liquidate pledged coins, the filing said.
The 18,750 Bitcoin represent almost 53% of the 35,577 tokens MARA held on June 30. Before completing the new loans, the company had 4,528 Bitcoin pledged as collateral, including 4,253 securing the refinanced Coinbase credit line.
The financing highlights MARA’s increasing use of its digital asset treasury as a source of liquidity. The company sold 23,093 Bitcoin for $1.6 billion during the first half of 2026, reducing its holdings from 53,822 tokens at the end of December. Its remaining Bitcoin were valued at approximately $2.1 billion on June 30.
MARA said the new proceeds would be available for general corporate purposes, including part of the cash consideration for its planned acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power LLC from FTAI Infrastructure Inc.
Announced in April, the transaction has an enterprise value of approximately $1.5 billion, including assumed debt. Long Ridge owns a gas-fired power plant in Hannibal, Ohio, with 505 megawatts of expected nameplate capacity and more than 1,600 acres of industrial land. MARA plans to use the site for power generation, bitcoin mining and a potential AI and high-performance-computing campus.
The company had $421.3 million of cash and approximately $2.4 billion of debt at the end of June. It had reduced borrowings earlier in the year by repurchasing roughly $1 billion of convertible notes, partly using proceeds from the Bitcoin sales.
MARA reported a second-quarter net loss of $611.3 million, compared with income of $808.2 million a year earlier, as falling Bitcoin prices produced $342.7 million of fair-value losses on its holdings. Revenue declined 27% to $174.9 million.
