mara bitcoin sale: Miner Dumps 13,597 BTC for $1.1B in Six Weeks

The mara bitcoin sale is the biggest miner treasury story of the week: MARA Holdings says it sold 13,597 BTC, about $1.1 billion, in roughly six weeks after September, at an average near $81,039 per coin. CoinDesk, which reviewed the company's third-quarter shareholder letter filed on Monday, says MARA plans to keep selling to fund AI infrastructure, debt payments and possible buybacks.

What actually happened

According to CoinDesk, MARA sold six times as much bitcoin in those six weeks as it mined in the whole third quarter. Most of the money went straight to lenders. The loans were taken out in August to help pay for Long Ridge, a natural-gas power business MARA agreed to buy, and the company has now sold coins to clear that borrowing before the deal closes.

The shareholder letter is blunt about what comes next: "We intend to continue using bitcoin to build cash for purposes such as AI infrastructure opportunities," MARA wrote. CoinDesk adds that some bondholders can demand early repayment starting next year and that MARA's board has approved buybacks of up to $500 million.

A reversal of the HODL promise

This marks a big change from 2024. In July of that year MARA adopted a treasury policy that committed it to keep every bitcoin it mined and to buy more in the market. It started allowing sales of newly mined coins in 2025, then widened the policy this year to cover older holdings. CoinDesk counts 26,984 BTC sold in the first nine months of 2026; the latest disposals take the year's total above 40,000 BTC.

The business is changing under the hood. Third-quarter revenue fell 35% to $164 million, CoinDesk reports, while MARA booked a $632 million profit that included an $885 million accounting gain from the rise in bitcoin's value during the quarter. That gain is on paper; the cash came from selling coins.

The AI data-center pivot

MARA expects Long Ridge to close in the coming weeks. The plant is authorized to sell 485 megawatts of power, and the land around it could host a data-center campus. MARA also holds development rights to a Texas site with potential capacity of up to 2 gigawatts, and says it is targeting two new data-center leases before year-end, though talks could slip into 2027.

That puts MARA in the same lane as several other miners that have moved toward renting power to AI companies. The difference is the size of its bitcoin pile and how quickly it is now turning it into cash.

What we do not know yet

The letter does not say how many coins MARA will sell next, at what pace, or at what prices. It also does not say whether the Texas site will be built for MARA's own use or leased to an outside AI tenant. Until those details arrive, the size of the next mara bitcoin sale is a guess, and anyone quoting a specific figure is speculating.

Why this matters for the market

A listed miner selling more than 13,000 BTC in six weeks is real supply, and it landed while demand from US spot ETFs was weak. KuCoin's daily market report counted about $842 million of net ETF outflows across November 5 and 6. We covered the flow picture in bitcoin etf outflows, and today's price ladder in bitcoin november 10 odds.

It is not proof of a trend. MARA's sales were mostly tied to one loan and one acquisition, and other miners have their own balance sheets. Still, the mara bitcoin sale shows that "never sell" treasury policies can change when the cash needs get big enough, and that is worth remembering the next time a company announces one.

What to do as a reader

Read the primary numbers yourself: start with the CoinDesk report and then MARA's investor relations page, where the third-quarter shareholder letter is posted. Watch for the Long Ridge closing and any update on further sales, because the company has said it intends to keep selling.

Nothing here is investment advice, and one company's treasury decision does not tell you where bitcoin goes next.