Bitcoin mining heavyweight MARA Holdings bought 11,774 Bitcoin for $1.1 billion on Dec. 10, while its hashrate exceeded 50 exahashes per second (EH/s) — an industry first.

MARA purchased its latest haul after a zero-coupon convertible note offering late last month, snapping up the 11,774 Bitcoin ( BTC ) at an average purchase price of $96,000, it said in a Dec. 10 X post.

As of Dec. 9, MARA held 40,435 Bitcoin, worth $3.92 billion at a current price of around $97,000.

MARA has made a 12.3% “BTC Yield” in the fourth quarter and 47.6% this year, according to a Dec. 9 filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

It uses BTC Yield as a key performance indicator to measure the percentage change between its Bitcoin holdings and its assumed fully diluted shares outstanding.

MARA Holdings buys $1.1B more Bitcoin, hits industry-first 50 EH/s image 0

Source: MARA Holdings

In July, MARA shifted to a new treasury policy to retain all Bitcoin it mines and adopt a range of capital market instruments to bolster its Bitcoin reserves, similar to MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin playbook .

MARA’s hashrate reaches 50 EH/s

MARA also reported doubling its energized hashrate in 2024 to reach its end-of-year target of 50 EH/s, making it the first public Bitcoin miner to cross the milestone.

“Mission accomplished … but why stop here,” MARA’s CEO Fred Thiel posted in response to MARA’s X post.

“Stay tuned as we have more miners on the shelf and we will just keep on adding using our existing capacity.”

MARA’s hashrate was 36.9 EH/s at the end of the third quarter, meaning it’s added at least 13.1 EH/s since then.

Related: Bitcoin ASIC maker Bitmain expands production line into US

MARA shares closed down 4.4% to $22.81 on Dec. 10 and has only seen a slight gain of just over 1% after-hours, Google Finance data shows.

MARA Holdings buys $1.1B more Bitcoin, hits industry-first 50 EH/s image 1

MARA’s change in share price on Dec. 10. Source: Google Finance

MARA’s stock is down 0.55% this year after it was one of the industry’s best performers in the 2023 market rebound, rising 586% over the previous year.

Bitcoin was trading at $97,090 at the time of writing, down 6.6% since it soared to a new all-time high of $104,000 on Dec. 5.

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