MARA Moves 996 BTC Worth $81M to Galaxy Digital Amid AI Pivot

A wallet belonging to bitcoin miner MARA Holdings sent 996 BTC, worth about $81.1 million, to addresses linked to Galaxy Digital. Analytics service Lookonchain flagged the transfer at 1:51 AM ET on Friday, Oct. 9, citing Arkham data. The on-chain movement is confirmed, but neither MARA nor Galaxy has said whether the coins were sold.

Details

According to Lookonchain, the coins left a wallet labeled "MARA Miner" for a Galaxy Digital address and an associated one. The service wrote that MARA "seems" to have "dumped" the bitcoin but offered no evidence of a sale on the open market. As CoinDesk notes, Galaxy provides trading and custody services to miners, so a transfer alone does not confirm that a sale took place. MARA shares were up about 2% in Friday pre-market trading, near $10.

The context points toward selling. MARA has parted with more than 23,000 BTC so far in 2026: 20,880 BTC for roughly $1.5 billion in the first quarter, and another 2,213 BTC at an average price of $73,078 in the second, crypto.news reports. The biggest single move came in March, when the company sold 15,133 BTC for about $1.1 billion to repurchase $1 billion of convertible notes. Per its Q2 shareholder letter, MARA held 35,577 BTC as of June 30, of which 9,270 BTC were loaned out or pledged as collateral, down from 49,951 BTC a year earlier. Quarterly revenue fell 27% to $174.9 million, and the net loss was $611.3 million.

In the same letter, the company said it would "continue to monetize bitcoin opportunistically to enhance our financial flexibility" and named "digital infrastructure," meaning power and AI compute, as its main growth focus. In August, MARA pledged 18,750 BTC as collateral for $600 million in new loans from Coinbase Credit and Two Prime. Part of that money is earmarked for the purchase of Long Ridge Energy & Power, a 505 MW gas plant in Ohio that MARA plans to convert into a mining and AI compute campus. The deal is awaiting FERC approval.

What it means for the market

MARA is one of the larger public bitcoin holders alongside Strategy, and it previously followed a policy of holding rather than selling mined coins. Now the miner is funding its shift to AI infrastructure out of its bitcoin reserves, and the market reads every transfer to a trading desk as a possible sale. At 996 BTC, the amount is small against daily volumes, but it lands on top of two straight days of bitcoin ETF outflows and a soft bitcoin tape: BTC traded near $82,600 as of 5:20 AM ET on Oct. 9, after dipping to $80,400 over the prior 24 hours (live price on the daily summary).

For miners as a group, the move is another sign that with bitcoin below $85,000 and borrowing costs rising, they are increasingly selling production rather than stacking it. If MARA confirms a sale in its next quarterly report, miner supply will remain a factor worth watching in on-chain data this fall.