Blocks Won Fell in June

MARA Holdings (MARA) now holds 49,940 bitcoin

, a trove that puts the public miner near the 50,000 threshold and makes it the second-largest publicly traded bitcoin holder behind Strategy (MSTR).

At current prices, the stack is worth close to $5.3 billion. Out of its treasury, 15,534 BTC are “pledged as collateral or held in a separately managed account” for the firm’s benefit, said the company in its June production update.

“This milestone reflects our disciplined approach to accumulating bitcoin through both mining and strategic purchases,” said MARA’s Chairman and CEO, Fred Thiel.

As for operations, MARA won 211 blocks in June, a 25% decline from the previous month thanks mostly to “weather-related curtailment and the temporary deployment of older machines in Garden City while storm-related damage was being remediated,” said the company.

The bitcoin miner is looking to expand its hash rate to 75 exahash by year-end, representing a 40% rise from last year’s year-end hash rate.

Shares are lower by 2.7% premarket alongside an overnight dip in the price of bitcoin to $106,400.