BlackRock, MARA Holdings, whale buys nearly 10K Bitcoin as price retreated
2024-12-06

Bitcoin-stacking firms BlackRock and MARA Holdings bought a combined 9,173 Bitcoin while an unknown whale scooped up 600 Bitcoin as the cryptocurrency’s price fell to $92,957 on Dec. 5.
BlackRock bought a whopping 7,750 Bitcoin BTCUSD as buyers scooped up shares of its spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, taking the firm’s total Bitcoin holdings to $48.9 billion at current prices, Arkham data shows.
“Fastest growing ETF EVER,” said Thomas Fahrer, founder of crypto markets firm Apollo, which tracks the spot Bitcoin ETF market.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings bought 1,423 Bitcoin — worth $139.5 million — across four transactions spanning between Dec. 5 and 6, blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain noted on X.
The Bitcoin purchases followed the closing of MARA’s second $850 million convertible note offering, which it said it would use to accumulate more Bitcoin.
MARA now holds 22,108 Bitcoin worth $2.17 billion, Arkham Intelligence data shows. It marks a massive 162% increase from this exact time last month.
In the third quarter, 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.
Meanwhile, an anonymous crypto whale seems to have also taken advantage of Bitcoin’s price slump on Dec. 5, snaring 600 Bitcoin worth $58.85 million, Lookonchain noted in a separate X post.
No Bitcoin was held in that whale’s wallet address — “bc1pg…u0pk3” — until its first transaction on Nov. 24, BitInfoCharts data shows.
Just a day earlier, Healthcare tech firm Semler Scientific bought another 303 Bitcoin at an average price of $96,779 on Dec. 4 — only several hours before Bitcoin surpassed the $100,000 milestone.
The firm’s latest purchase increased its Bitcoin holdings to 1,873 Bitcoin, worth $182.8 million.
Bitcoin-stacking firms like Semler Scientific hold a combined 527,026 Bitcoin — representing 2.66% of Bitcoin’s current supply, according to the 67 public firms tracked by Bitcoin Treasuries.
Governments hold 2,856 Bitcoin, while asset management firms and private firms hold 1,253 Bitcoin and 410,418 Bitcoin, respectively.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $97,580, down 4.9% over the last 24 hours.