MARA Pledges 18,750 BTC for $600 Million New Bitcoin-Backed Loans

This article first appeared in The Energy Mag. The original article can be viewed here. The Energy Mag (formerly The Miner Mag) provides news, data, and insights on the energy–compute–markets nexus.

The Bitcoin mining completed the two term loans with Coinbase Credit and Two Prime Lending on Aug. 4, according to a quarterly filing on Thursday. The pledged tokens were valued at about $1.2 billion when the transactions closed.

The facilities have combined principal of $750 million because a $450 million Coinbase loan includes the refinancing of an existing $150 million credit line. Coinbase supplied $300 million of additional funding, while Two Prime provided a separate $300 million loan. Both facilities have been fully drawn.

The Coinbase debt carries a floating rate equal to the midpoint of the Federal Reserve’s target range plus 3.875 percentage points. That equates to 7.5% under the current 3.5%-to-3.75% range, which the Fed maintained on July 29. The loan matures on Aug. 4, 2028, with an automatic one-year extension unless either party cancels it.

Two Prime’s loan has a fixed rate of 7.65% and matures on Aug. 3, 2028. At current rates, the two facilities would generate about $56.7 million of annual interest expense if their principal remained unchanged.