MARA Holdings Sells $1.5 Billion Bitcoin As It Pushes Into A.I. Data Centres

Cryptocurrency miner MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:$MARA) has sold $1.5 billion U.S. worth of Bitcoin (CRYPTO:$BTC) as it expands into artificial intelligence (A.I.) data centres.

In its first-quarter earnings statement, the company said it sold the BTC to improve its liquidity and retire debt associated with its pivot to running A.I. data centres.

As a result, MARA Holdings has fallen two places to become the fourth largest publicly traded holder of Bitcoin, according to market data.

Management at MARA said they do not expect to make purchases of specialized Bitcoin mining machines going forward, signalling the company's move away from crypto mining.

MARA Holdings is one of several crypto miners that is shifting its focus to A.I. and high-performance computing (HPC) as the prices of digital assets languish.

However, MARA has said that it wants to place new infrastructure alongside its crypto mining operations, allowing the company to generate Bitcoin revenue while keeping the option to redirect power toward A.I. workloads.

Around 90% of MARA's non-hosted mining capacity could be used for A.I. infrastructure, the company has said.

MARA Holdings reported that its first-quarter revenue fell 18% from a year earlier to $174.6 million U.S.

The company's net loss in Q1 widened to $1.3 billion U.S., largely tied to unrealized losses on the 38,689 Bitcoin it owned in the quarter.

MARA stock has declined 16% in the last 12 months to trade at $13.39 U.S. per share.