New York, May 15, 2026, 13:04 EDT
- MARA shares slipped roughly 7.4% to $12.30. Bitcoin also lost ground, dropping 3.3% to $79,222.
- Long Ridge noteholders have until 5 p.m. New York time this Friday to give their consent for MARA’s proposed acquisition.
- MARA posted first-quarter revenue of $174.6 million, but swung to a net loss of $1.3 billion, with most of that coming from bitcoin fair-value losses.
MARA Holdings slid Friday, tracking bitcoin’s dip, with pressure mounting ahead of a bondholder consent cutoff tied to its bid for Long Ridge Energy & Power. The acquisition sits at the heart of the miner’s expansion into AI-driven power and data-center infrastructure.
This shift comes as MARA looks to convince investors its hefty energy resources could fetch higher returns by leasing out computing power, rather than sticking only to bitcoin mining. The pitch lands just as the main business still faces bitcoin’s price swings, rising mining difficulty, and the ongoing expenses of building out more infrastructure.
MARA’s first-quarter shareholder letter put revenue at $174.6 million, down 18% year-over-year. The company reported a steep $1.3 billion loss for the period, with $1.0 billion of that attributed to shifts in the fair value of its digital assets. MARA sold 20,880 bitcoin in the quarter, averaging $70,137 per coin.
The company wants approval from holders of Long Ridge Energy’s 8.750% senior secured notes due 2032 to tweak terms that might otherwise force a change-of-control offer following the acquisition. MARA has put $2.50 per $1,000 principal on the table for those who consent, with payment dependent on closing the deal.
Last month, Reuters said MARA struck a $1.5 billion deal—including debt—to acquire Long Ridge from FTAI Infrastructure. The package puts a 505-megawatt gas plant in Hannibal, Ohio, plus more than 1,600 acres, in MARA’s hands. That land’s earmarked for a data-center campus. CEO Fred Thiel told Reuters the location checked “all the key components” for the buildout. Reuters
The company is talking up Long Ridge as something bigger than just a power plant. According to the pitch, the site could handle artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC)—think major compute jobs for AI training, inference, and similar heavyweight tasks—all while bitcoin mining keeps running at Hannibal.
On MARA’s earnings call, Thiel pushed back on any idea that demand was cooling. “The demand in this market isn’t decreasing,” he said. Prospective tenants, he added, are actually growing more anxious to lock in capacity. Investing.com
The landscape is moving fast. Jefferies analyst Jonathan Petersen points out that bitcoin miners turning to AI data centers have an early advantage—mostly because they already hold power allocations set aside for mining. Meanwhile, others such as Cipher Digital, TeraWulf, and Core Scientific are now in the Wall Street spotlight for pursuing similar shifts.
Prediction markets aren’t signaling a smooth ride—expect more headwinds. On Polymarket, the odds for zero Fed rate cuts in 2026 sat at 67%. Its crypto markets, meanwhile, saw just a 44% probability of bitcoin reaching $78,000 between May 11 and 17, and only 8% for $76,000. Prolonged high rates can squeeze infrastructure financing, and weaker bitcoin prices sap miners’ balance-sheet room to maneuver.
But macro factors aren’t the only risk here. MARA flagged in its quarterly filing that the Long Ridge acquisition still faces a gauntlet of regulatory signoffs, including Hart-Scott-Rodino and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The company also acknowledged it might be on the hook for a $75 million breakup fee if the deal fails to close on time. Liquidity risks? The filing listed bitcoin price drops, weaker production, and tougher network difficulty among them.
Right now, MARA sits at a crossroads. The company is still among the biggest public bitcoin miners, running 72.2 exahashes per second in energized hashrate—that’s the computing muscle currently directed at mining bitcoin. But in the eyes of investors, the stock is starting to hinge more on how management handles the shift: can they actually convert those power assets, land, and interconnection rights into concrete AI and data-center lease deals?
