The two largest bitcoin listed companies, Strategy ( MSTR ) and MARA Holdings ( MARA ), have each fallen about 40% over the past six weeks.
CoinDesk Research has widely covered the MSTR correction, but MARA, down 55% year-over-year, is also attracting attention as some investors see it as cheap 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 claims that the company is actually trading at a premium to its bitcoin holdings and not a discount.
Sigel highlights MARA’s $3.3 billion in outstanding convertible debt against its $4.9 billion in bitcoin holdings. Adjusting for the convertible debt leaves only $1.6 billion in net bitcoin value before taking into account any additional liabilities incurred by the mining company.
That compares to a stock market cap of $4.7 billion, which Sigel suggests MARA is actually 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 rate, which currently stands at 27%. After adjusting for delta hedging related to the company’s convertible bonds, Sigel estimates that the true short rate falls to about 15%, a reduction of 44%.
Sigel contrasts this with MSTR, which has more than $8 billion in convertible debt compared to a market cap of $53 billion.
Once hedge-related shorts are removed, MSTR’s short interest falls by just 31%, or by about 9 million shares. Sigel characterizes MARA’s short interest as more structural compared to MSTRs, which he cites as more fundamentally driven.
Sigel argues that over half of MARA’s stock volatility stems from its capital structure and funding dynamics, rather than from pure bitcoin beta. He concludes that MSTR offers a much cleaner bitcoin duration exposure, while MARA’s mining stock performance is dominated by what he describes as a problematic capital structure.
