MARA Holdings (MARA), the largest bitcoin (BTC) miner by market capitalization, said it is lending 7,377 BTC to third parties to generate a return on its holdings and cover some operational costs.
In a production report released on Friday, MARA did not identify the borrowers or disclose other details about the program, which links about 16% of its bitcoin. Robert Samuels, the company’s vice president of investor relations, said in a post on X that it earns a yield of less than 10%.
“There has been great interest in MARA’s bitcoin lending program,” Samuels posted. “It focuses on short-term arrangements with well-established third parties. It generates a small single-digit yield. It has been active throughout 2024. The long-term goal is to generate enough yield to recover operating costs”.
The company produced 890 bitcoins last month, 2% less than in November, the production report shows. However, this is the second largest number of BTC since the April reward split.
“We mined 249 blocks, the second most blocks in a single month on record,” Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel said in the report. “MARAPool has achieved an impressive annual hash rate growth of 168% by 2024, surpassing bitcoin’s network growth rate by 49%”.
For all of 2024, MARA mined 22,065 BTC at an average price of $87,205 and mined an additional 9,457 BTC taking its total holdings to 44,893 BTC. Bitcoin is currently trading just below $100,000. The company is the second-largest publicly traded owner of bitcoin, trailing only MicroStrategy (MSTR).
MARA shares rose 2.60% in pre-market trading and are up 14% since the start of the year.
