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![penny_ether Avatar](https://lunarcrush.com/gi/w:24/cr:twitter::1434672074358919169.png) pennyether [@penny_ether](/creator/twitter/penny_ether) on x 9961 followers
Created: 2025-07-18 17:12:15 UTC

$MARA - Going back to my roots for a moment and calling out red flags. This was off-the-dome, so I probably forgot some stuff (feel free to comment). Happy to hear counter-arguments to any of these -- other than "they have a big HODL".

Financials:

- Heavy reliance on ATM. That money does not appear to be put to good use. It's spent to patch up a massive leaking tanker, and concurrently to grow the size of this leaking tanker. (Would potentially be a turn-around story if they weren't already massive and weren't already overvalued.)
- Industry-high cash hashcost of around $XX (Q1). Total cash burn was around $170m in Q1. Since they HODL, this all must get funded via ATM or debt. Peers are in mid/low $30's, $IREN is below $XX. Expressed as $/KWH (eg, agnostic of fleet J/TH), they are trailing as well.
- The above hashcost excludes other cash expenses which seemingly contribute $X towards the bottom line: R&D, "other non-operating income", "taxes other than on income".  (totalled $22m in Q1)
- I don't know how they pay so much for ASICs, but they do. End of 2023, $862m cost basis on mining rigs. End of 2024, $1,706m. So they spent $843m to increase EH/s from XXXX to XXXX. That's $30/TH/s, or $30m / EH/s.
- For reference, at XXX EH/s difficulty, X EH/s produces around XX BTC per month. Call it $1.8m/month, at a cost of ($43 x XXXXX x 30) = ~$1.3m/month.. so around $500k/month cashflow on a $30m investment. (Economics of this are subject to hashprice, but the halving will cut BTC mined in half.)
- Still a heavy reliance on hosting (45% of BTC mined, in Q1). This is improving, but it's at a cost to buy (high downtime) infra. More ATM usage, just to get inline with peers.
- EV/EBITDA:  Going off of 346m shares (Feb), $2.225b in debt (or 82m shares), and XXXXXX BTC, their EV is around $3b. So you're paying $3b for mining operations. At hashcost of around $40, hashprice of around $60, and around XX EH/s (generously)... that's around $365m of cashflow per year at present conditions. So, you're paying for ~8 years of cashflow, should hashprice stay where it's at now (it will almost certainly decay across those X years).
- The above isn't including the additional shares to be printed to expand the fleet (higher EV), nor the additional EH/s they'll get from the fleet (higher EBITDA)... but do you really want to pay a premium for larger scale version of these economics?
- Where is 2PIC revenue?
- Quite generous stock-based compensation.

Operations:

- Massive downtime. "Energized EH/s" is their preferred metric... They stopped reporting average operational EH/s nearly a year ago (I wonder why?). 
- But, average EH/s can be deduced from BTC mined. Since Jan 2024, they've averaged XXXX% in missing hashrate. In Q2 they'll have missed out on ~$30m of revenue for not operating at "energized EH/s" levels.
- The "average operational EH/s" I compute is based on BTC mined. As a result of running their own pool, there is volatility to be expected (luck factor). But, apparently they've had "10% luck" -- a fact they are ironically proud of -- so actually their operational EH/s is lower than deduced.
- Operating their own mining pool contributes practically nothing to top line revenue. I estimate they accrued an additional $1.1m of revenue in 2024, over the network average tx fees. That amounts to XXX% of additional revenue.

Smoke and mirrors:

- Incessant attempts of "Ivory Tower" positioning, a spaghetti-against-the-wall approach to being relevant in adjacent narratives, and they are not transparent.
- No analyst questions in earnings calls. They appear to be "fireside chats" and the question/responses seem canned.
- No interviews. Unless you count management and board members interviewing each other. (I don't.)
- Persistent spam of PR's and tweets about non-core business prospects, loosely related narratives, or just crap. When it is business related, little to no disclosure or remarks of potential financial impact.
- Coattail riding of Saylor, Trump, and whomever is visibly bullish on "energy", "AI", "USA", "Bitcoin". Same for any narratives which are popular (BTC Treasury, AI, Power, etc).
- No disclosure of large ASIC purchase orders, or fleet.
- At its core, $MARA just mines BTC at high cost... they are not any more suited to benefit from these themes than their peers, and in most cases are less suited.

Other:
- In the coming months, there's a good chance they will not mine the most BTC. Depends on luck, and how fast they splurge on hitting their XX EH/s target (possibly by paying for hosting, which would mean worse financials in their 10Qs).

Summary of Business Model:

(Trust me, I minored in astronomy.)

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Disclaimer: I bought some Sept $20P, and am short the stock -- mostly as a hedge against my other BTC-related positions.

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**Related Topics**
[money](/topic/money)
[atm](/topic/atm)
[reliance](/topic/reliance)
[hodl](/topic/hodl)
[$mara](/topic/$mara)
[stocks financial services](/topic/stocks-financial-services)
[stocks bitcoin treasuries](/topic/stocks-bitcoin-treasuries)

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