The two largest publicly traded companies holding bitcoin, Strategy (MSTR) and MARA Holdings (MARA), have each fallen roughly 40% over the past six weeks.
CoinDesk Research has extensively covered the MSTR correction, but MARA, which is down 55% year over year, is also attracting attention as some investors view it as inexpensive at current levels.
Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, argues that the perception of MARA as cheap is not supported by the data. Sigel argues that the company is actually trading at a premium to it’s bitcoin holdings and not a discount.
Sigel highlights MARA’s $3.3 billion in outstanding convertible debt relative to its $4.9 billion in bitcoin holdings. Adjusting for the convertible debt leaves just $1.6 billion of net bitcoin value before accounting for any additional liabilities that the mining business incurs.
That compares with a $4.7 billion equity market cap, which Sigel implies that MARA is in fact trading at a premium once debt is included, rather than at a discount to its bitcoin holdings.
Sigel also addresses MARA’s high short interest, which currently stands at 27%. After adjusting for delta hedging related to the company’s convertible notes, Sigel estimates that true short interest falls to about 15%, a reduction of 44%.
Sigel contrasts this with MSTR, which has more than $8 billion of convertible debt, compared to a $53 billion market cap.
Once hedge related shorts are removed, MSTR’s short interest declines by only 31%, or by roughly 9 million shares. Sigel characterizes MARA’s short interest as more structural, compared with MSTR’s which he frames as more fundamentals driven.
Sigel argues that over half of MARA’s equity volatility stems from its capital structure and financing dynamics rather than from pure bitcoin beta. He concludes that MSTR offers a much cleaner bitcoin duration exposure, while MARA’s mining equity performance is dominated by what he describes as a problematic capital structure.
