MARA Acquires 2 GW Texas Site in $600M Bitcoin-and-Cash Deal, Nearly Doubling Power Capacity to 4.8 GW

MARA Holdings shares surged roughly 15% in early trading Thursday after the BBTC$63,321.00▼1.16% miner agreed to acquire a Texas site with up to 2 gigawatts of power capacity from HIF in a deal valued at approximately $600 million — paid partly in Bitcoin. The acquisition nearly doubles MARA’s total power footprint to about 4.8 GW and marks the company’s most concrete step yet into AI and high-performance computing infrastructure alongside its core mining business. (CoinTelegraph)

The deal’s structure — cash plus Bitcoin — is unusual for a real estate and infrastructure transaction, and the question is worth asking plainly: who benefits from a miner using its own treasury asset as acquisition currency? MARA has spent the past year accumulating Bitcoin on its balance sheet rather than selling it. Funding a land deal partly with BTC lets the company deploy that reserve without triggering a taxable event through a conventional sale, while simultaneously signaling to markets that it views its own holdings as transactional currency. The seller, HIF, takes on Bitcoin exposure in exchange for unloading a powered site that may have been difficult to monetize otherwise. The exact cash-to-Bitcoin ratio has not been disclosed; if MARA files an 8-K or issues a detailed press release, that breakdown will be the first number worth scrutinizing. (The Defiant)

The Texas site is slated to become a digital infrastructure campus supporting both HPC and Bitcoin mining, according to research snippets from TradingView and CoinTelegraph. Full 2 GW capacity is expected to come online by 2028, meaning the deal is as much a multi-year option on power availability as it is an immediate operational asset. For a company whose stock has already returned approximately 38.57% over the trailing 90 days, locking in long-dated power at scale is the kind of move that keeps institutional investors interested — even if the revenue impact is years away. (Bitcoin.com)

Decrypt separately confirmed that MARA agreed to acquire a “massive powered Texas land plot,” corroborating the scale of the site reported by other outlets. The language matters. A “powered” site is not raw acreage — it is land with transmission infrastructure, interconnection agreements, or at least the regulatory pathway to bring large-scale electricity to the property. That distinction is what separates this deal from speculative land banking. (Decrypt)

The acquisition places MARA alongside peers such as TeraWulf and IREN, both of which have already pivoted toward AI and data center infrastructure as a hedge against the cyclicality of Bitcoin mining revenue. The logic is straightforward: HPC tenants sign multi-year contracts with fixed revenue, while mining income fluctuates with hash price, difficulty adjustments, and Bitcoin’s spot price. Diversifying into HPC gives miners a second revenue stream that doesn’t rise and fall with crypto markets — or at least, that’s the pitch. Whether AI demand will actually fill these sites at the margins companies are projecting remains an open question, and one that the current crop of mining-to-HPC converts is betting billions on. (Investor’s Business Daily)

The broader market context for the announcement is mixed. Bitcoin is currently trading at $64,207, up 0.56% over 24 hours, with a market capitalization of $1,287.24 billion and BTC dominance at 56.2%. The total crypto market cap stands at $2,290.91 billion, up 0.84% in the same period. The Fear & Greed Index sits at 28 out of 100 — firmly in Fear territory. That divergence, between modest green candles and a sentiment gauge signaling anxiety, is the backdrop against which MARA is making a $600 million bet on power infrastructure. The company is effectively wagering that the value of secured, large-scale electricity will outpace the volatility of the asset it used to help pay for it.

MARA’s 1-day share price return at the time of the deal ranged from approximately 9.98% to 15%, depending on the timestamp, extending a 90-day rally of 38.57%. The market’s immediate read is that access to 2 GW of power — even if it arrives gradually through 2028 — is worth a double-digit premium on the stock. The risk is execution. Building out a hybrid HPC and mining campus at that scale requires permitting, grid coordination, hardware procurement, and tenant agreements that have not yet been announced. The press release describes ambition; the balance sheet will describe results.

Three things to watch: whether MARA discloses the exact cash-to-Bitcoin ratio in the $600 million deal, whether HIF retains any interest or optionality in the site, and how quickly the company can bring an initial phase of power online ahead of the full 2 GW buildout in 2028.