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MARA Pledged 18,750 Bitcoin for $600 Million. Nobody Outside the Company Knows the Liquidation Price

By Optimisus • •6 min read
MARA Pledged 18,750 Bitcoin for $600 Million. Nobody Outside the Company Knows the Liquidation Price

MARA Holdings closed two bitcoin-backed credit facilities on August 4, pledging 18,750 BTC worth roughly $1.2 billion at the time.

That unlocked $600 million in new borrowing. The coins were not sold, so the company keeps its bitcoin exposure and gets cash.

There is one number missing from the disclosure, and it is the one that matters most.

The Structure

The $600 million sits inside a broader $750 million facility arrangement, fully drawn.

Coinbase Credit provided $450 million of that. Only $300 million is new money, because $150 million refinanced an existing credit line. Two Prime Lending supplied the other $300 million.

So the incremental borrowing is $300 million plus $300 million. Several outlets have reported the $450 million as if it were all new capital, which overstates the raise by half.

The Coinbase facility carries a floating rate set at the midpoint of the Federal Reserve’s target range plus 3.875 percentage points, working out near 7.5%. Two Prime’s loan is fixed at 7.65%.

The weighted average across the $600 million is 7.56%. At current principal that implies annual interest in the region of $57 million.

Both facilities mature in August 2028, with reporting indicating an automatic one-year extension on the Coinbase side unless either party cancels.

ItemCoinbase CreditTwo Prime Lending
Facility size$450 million$300 million
New borrowing$300 million$300 million
Refinancing$150 million existing lineNone
RateFloating, near 7.5%Fixed, 7.65%
MaturityAugust 2028August 2028

The Number That Is Not There

Both lenders require MARA to maintain agreed collateral ratios. If the value of the pledged bitcoin falls below the margin call threshold, MARA must post more collateral or the lenders can liquidate.

MARA has not disclosed the maintenance ratio. So the bitcoin price at which a forced liquidation of that pool would begin is not public.

This is the single most useful piece of information for anyone assessing the risk, and it is absent.

That is not unusual for private credit agreements. It does mean that any analysis of MARA’s downside is working with an unknown, and readers should discount confident claims about where the trigger sits.

The Collateral Math Does Not Reconcile

Here is a discrepancy worth flagging rather than smoothing over.

At June 30, MARA already had 4,528 BTC pledged as collateral, including 4,253 securing the Coinbase line that was later refinanced. It had another 4,742 BTC loaned to third parties.

Add the new 18,750 BTC to the prior pledge and you get more than 23,000 coins. Against a treasury of 35,577 BTC, that would be around 65%.

Yet the widely reported figure is that roughly 54% of the treasury is now locked as collateral. CryptoSlate noted directly that the August 4 collateral pool cannot be reconciled with the quarter-end pledged and loaned totals.

The likely explanation is overlap, with the refinanced coins folded into the new pool rather than added to it. The filing does not spell that out.

So treat the 53% and 54% figures as approximations of the same thing, and note that the underlying disclosure leaves room for interpretation.

What the Money Is For

The proceeds go toward MARA’s acquisition of Long Ridge Energy and Power from FTAI Infrastructure, at an enterprise value around $1.5 billion.

Long Ridge is a 505 megawatt gas plant in Ohio. MARA plans to develop it for bitcoin mining and AI compute.

Some coverage has cited a capacity of up to 2 gigawatts. That appears to describe a development ambition for the site rather than the plant’s current 505 megawatt rating, and the two figures should not be used interchangeably.

Closing is set for November 30, 2026, subject to regulatory approvals, extendable to June 30, 2027 if conditions remain unresolved. MARA disclosed it could owe a $75 million termination fee if the deal does not complete.

Why Borrow Instead of Sell

MARA has been selling heavily. It sold roughly 23,093 BTC for about $1.6 billion during the first half of 2026, at an average near $70,631 per coin.

Holdings fell from 53,822 BTC at the end of 2025 to 35,577 by June 30. In the second quarter alone it sold 2,213 coins, equal to more than 91% of what it mined.

Borrowing against the remainder avoids adding to that. It also avoids issuing equity into a weak share price.

The trade-off is that the debt is now tied to a volatile asset. Selling crystallizes a loss once. Pledging keeps the exposure and adds a margin call.

This is the mirror image of what Strategy has been doing, and Optimisus covered that approach in the piece on Strategy selling bitcoin to finish its cash reserve.

MARA is no stranger to putting its coins to work, having previously lent out 7,377 bitcoin in 2024.

The Earnings Backdrop

MARA reported second-quarter revenue of $174.9 million and a net loss of $611.3 million. Of that loss, $342.7 million came from fair-value adjustments on bitcoin rather than cash leaving the business.

Energized hashrate reached 70.3 exahashes per second, up 22% year on year.

For the first half, the net loss was $1.87 billion, driven largely by a $1.4 billion decline in the fair value of holdings. Net cash used in operating activities across the six months was $471.3 million.

The company also repurchased roughly $1 billion of its 0% convertible notes, cutting total debt from about $3.6 billion to $2.4 billion.

So the balance sheet is being restructured, not simply levered up. Old zero-coupon debt is being swapped for secured borrowing at over 7%.

What This Says About the Market

Bitcoin-backed institutional credit is becoming ordinary infrastructure. A Nasdaq-listed company borrowing $600 million against coins, from a listed exchange and a specialist lender, would have been unusual two years ago.

That maturity cuts both ways. Deeper credit markets mean miners have alternatives to dumping coins into weak bids, which removes sell pressure.

It also means more of the sector’s debt is collateralized by the same asset, and margin calls tend to arrive at the same time for everyone.

Equity markets have already been pricing miners and treasury companies differently from the coin itself, a divergence Optimisus examined in the piece on crypto stocks telling a very different story from bitcoin.

Bitcoin has been holding a range near $64,000 to $66,000. The gap between that level and MARA’s undisclosed trigger is the number the market cannot see, and it is the one that decides how this ends.

Sources

This is not financial advice.

Optimisus covers crypto and technology news for readers who want the detail behind the headline.

Topics
#Blockchain #Crypto