Why MARA Holdings Stock Gained 17% This Week

Key Points

• MARA Holdings stock soared 17.3% this week after a strong June mining report.

• The mining volume was down 23% from May, but management still set bullish production targets for the full year.

Shares of MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) soared 17.3% this week. The crypto-mining expert's stock rose 17.3% from last Friday's closing bell to the early market exit on Thursday, July 3, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Most of the price gain sprung from MARA's Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) mining report, covering results in the month of June.

Why block rewards matter to MARA Holdings' bottom line

The company formerly known as Marathon Holdings won 211 blocks in last month's Bitcoin mining sweepstakes.

For those unfamiliar with the process, the Bitcoin mining system awards a certain number of Bitcoins to the computer that completed the validation of each transaction data block.

The reward currently stands at 3.125 Bitcoins, handed out approximately every 10 minutes to the next lucky winner. It was halved in April 2024, and the next halving of rewards is scheduled for the spring of 2028. These inflation-shrinking events occur approximately every four years, on a schedule that is hardcoded in Bitcoin's operating software.

Since MARA runs the largest Bitcoin mining infrastructure in the world, the company handles the final data validation on a significant number of blocks. In June, MARA won 5.4% of all available Bitcoin mining rewards.

This tally was 23% below May's haul of 282 Bitcoin block awards. June is a 3% shorter month, and some of MARA's mining rigs were temporarily turned off due to weather-related events. Nevertheless, management set a year-end production target of 75 exahashes per second (a standard performance metric for Bitcoin mining operations). That's 40% above the 53 EH/s MARA generated at the end of 2024, and 31% more than the current rate of 57.4 EH/s.

Image source: Getty Images.

Why investors are cheering MARA's growing Bitcoin stash

MARA held 47,940 Bitcoin by the end of June, second only to Michael Saylor's Strategy (formerly known as MicroStrategy) among public companies with reported Bitcoin holdings.

Investors are excited about MARA's rapid Bitcoin mining growth, which demonstrates an effective mining infrastructure as well as a deep commitment to the mining operations. If Bitcoin prices continue to grow over time, MARA should end up with a massive balance of Bitcoin-based assets. Today, MARA's Bitcoin holdings are worth roughly $5.47 billion -- more than 88% of MARA's total market capitalization.

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Anders Bylund has positions in Bitcoin and Mara. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.