Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) is trading above the value of its net bitcoin holdings once its convertible debt is included, according to Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck. Sigel’s December 4–5, 2025 note recalculates MARA’s balance-sheet exposure and argues the company’s market valuation reflects capital-structure risk as much as, if not more than, its bitcoin position.
Sigel highlights $3.3 billion in outstanding convertible debt as the key adjustment to MARA’s reported $4.9 billion in bitcoin holdings, leaving an estimated net bitcoin value of about $1.6 billion. That gap contrasts with MARA’s roughly $4.7 billion market capitalization, implying the equity trades at a premium once debt is deducted. The analyst places more than half of MARA’s equity volatility on financing dynamics rather than pure bitcoin beta, a distinction that changes the security’s risk profile for investors.
The note also traces MARA’s broader debt trajectory, listing total debt at $2.47 billion in December 2024 and rising to $2.63 billion by March 2025. It places that company-level leverage in a wider sector context where miner debt has expanded materially; one set of estimates cited by Sigel indicates total miner debt jumped from about $2.1 billion to $12.7 billion year-over-year, with some reports pushing the figure above $20 billion. These figures frame capital structure as a sector-wide risk that can amplify equity moves independent of bitcoin price action.
Short-interest metrics reinforce the structural element of MARA’s volatility. Reported short interest of 27% falls to roughly 15% after adjusting for delta hedging tied to convertible instruments, a 44% reduction that Sigel contrasts with MicroStrategy (MSTR), where a similar adjustment reduces short interest by about 31%. MSTR itself carries north of $8 billion in convertibles but shows a markedly larger market-cap base, and Sigel argues it offers a cleaner bitcoin-duration exposure compared with MARA’s financing-driven noise.
Operational footprint and strategic pivot of MARA
Convertible debt is a corporate bond that can be converted into equity under predefined conditions; it can introduce dilution and hedging flows that affect short-interest calculations. (Definition) Delta hedging is a derivatives strategy that neutralizes directional exposure, often used around convertible securities and affecting measured short positions.
Operationally, Sigel notes MARA’s cost to produce a bitcoin at about $23,800, below an industry-average figure of $28,400 — an efficiency that supports competitiveness. He also documents the company’s strategic moves to monetize energy and infrastructure by pivoting into AI and high-performance computing data-center services alongside peers such as Riot Platforms and CleanSpark. That diversification repurposes mining energy and hardware toward AI workloads, a response to margin pressure in mining and an attempt to stabilize non-bitcoin revenue.
Sigel’s analysis reframes MARA from an apparent discounted proxy for bitcoin into a capital-structure-driven equity whose valuation embeds debt and related option and hedging dynamics. For investors, the takeaway is that balance-sheet mechanics, not just on-balance-sheet bitcoin, will likely drive short- to medium-term performance.
