Bitcoin Miner Marathon Buys $100M BTC, Will Once Again Adopt ‘Full HODL’ Strategy

Marathon Digital (MARA), one of the largest Bitcoin {{BTC}} miners, has purchased $100 million worth of BTC from the open market and announced that it will re-embrace its strategy of keeping all mined Bitcoin on its balance sheet.

The miner said on Thursday that it has more than 20,000 Bitcoins on its balance sheet, currently worth about $1.3 billion, and that it plans to buy more on the open market.

“The recent price decline of Bitcoin, combined with the strength of our balance sheet, has given us an opportunity to add to our assets. We look forward to continuing to leverage our technological expertise to support Bitcoin and the distributed digital asset ecosystem,” said Salman Khan, CFO of Marathon.

The decision to HODL, or hold bitcoin, comes almost a year after Marathon began selling its mined digital assets to cover the company’s operating expenses. Before the crypto winter, most miners adopted a strategy of holding all mined bitcoin on their balance sheets, and this paid off during the bull market rally. However, when the market crashed last year, most miners began selling their mined bitcoin to cover operating expenses, and Marathon was one of the last miners to start converting its digital assets into cash in early 2023.

“Adopting a full HODL strategy reflects our confidence in the long-term value of bitcoin,” said Fred Thiel, Marathon’s president and CEO. “We believe bitcoin is the world’s best treasury reserve asset and support the idea of ​​sovereign wealth funds holding it. We encourage governments and corporations to hold bitcoin as a reserve asset.”

After a long bear market, bitcoin began to recover its losses this year after firms like BlackRock won approval to offer spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. The move drew more investors into the market and helped the digital asset reach a new all-time high. Bitcoin has since come down from its peak of over $70,000 and is currently trading around $64,000 — still up 51% this year.

“Given the current positive impacts of Bitcoin, such as increasing institutional support and improving macro environment, we are once again executing this strategy and focusing on increasing the amount we hold on our balance sheet,” Marathon’s CFO said.

Marathon had $268 million in cash on its balance sheet as of June 30 and will report second-quarter earnings on Aug. 1. The miner’s shares were down about 2.5% in premarket trading, while bitcoin has fallen by about the same amount over the past 24 hours. The broader CoinDesk20 Index is down 5.4% over the same time period.