MARA Holdings Cuts 15% of Staff as Bitcoin Miners Sell Reserves and Retrench

MARA Holdings conducted company-wide layoffs this week as the miner pivots toward AI infrastructure, while Riot Platforms disclosed it sold 3,778 BTC in Q1 for $289.5 million.

MARA Holdings conducted a series of company-wide layoffs this week affecting multiple departments, with sources describing the cuts as “ongoing” and carried out across at least two rounds on Wednesday and Thursday. Unconfirmed reports put the reduction at approximately 15% of MARA’s workforce — roughly 40 positions based on the company’s most recently disclosed headcount of 266 full-time employees. MARA has not publicly commented on the cuts.

The workforce reduction followed a major balance sheet move: between March 4 and March 25, MARA sold 15,133 BTC for approximately $1.1 billion, using the proceeds to repurchase portions of its convertible senior notes due in 2030 and 2031 at roughly a 9% discount to par. CEO Fred Thiel has framed the bitcoin sales, debt reduction, and now the workforce cuts as part of a deliberate transition away from pure-play mining toward AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.

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MARA also indicated that selling bitcoin could become a recurring element of its treasury strategy, with plans to liquidate additional holdings “from time to time” throughout 2026 to support liquidity needs and fund corporate initiatives.

In another sign of the rough patch bitcoin miners have hit, Riot Platforms disclosed a similar trajectory Thursday. The miner sold 3,778 BTC in Q1 2026 for $289.5 million at an average price of $76,626 per coin, reducing its total holdings to 15,680 BTC as of March 31 — down 18% from 19,223 BTC held a year earlier. Riot produced only 1,473 BTC during the quarter, selling more than twice what it mined. Blockchain platform Arkham flagged an additional 500 BTC outflow from a Riot-attributed wallet in early April.

The back-to-back disclosures reflect a broader miner retrenchment, with rising energy costs — worsened by the Iran conflict’s pressure on oil prices — squeezing margins across the sector. Several other publicly listed miners, including Genius Group, Empery Digital, Bitdeer, and Core Scientific, also reduced or eliminated their BTC holdings in recent months, while Metaplanet and Strategy continued accumulating on the other side of the trade.