December 17, 2025 • 11 mins
Bitcoin is headed for the fourth annual decline in its history, and the first one that didn’t coincide with a major scandal or industry meltdown. While the latest decline is a much milder correction than in the previous three down years, it’s happened against a vastly different backdrop. Since the last major crypto crash in 2022, institutional adoption has widened, regulation has matured, and the industry has found its arguably most important champion in US President Donald Trump.
Fred Thiel, the CEO of MARA, which is the second largest publicly held bitcoin miner, explains why the remains committed to the world's leading cryptocurrency, and why he sees a market recovery on the horizon. Fred speaks with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
We talked about this at the top. Bitcoin not having
a great year. It's headed for its fourth annual decline
in its history, and the first one that didn't coincide
with a major scandal or industry meltdown. So we're talking
about cryptocurrencies. The bitcoin specifically now nearly seven percent lower
for the year. It's down around thirty percent from its
October sixth all time high. Volumes low, and investors tim
(00:37):
baling a Bitcoin ETFs. You know about this, you do
a weekly bitcoin show, you.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Know, yeah. I mean the bear market means that bitcoin
has decoupled from stocks, the S and P five hundred
closing in at a record earlier this month, up sixteen
percent for the year. Bitcoin struggle to find footing. The
bitcoin minor and accumulator Mara Holdings knows all too well
about the drop. Its own stock down more than thirty
six percent so far this year. Nearly twenty eight percent
of the float is shorted, with more.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
We had to.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Paris and to Fred Teeley's chairman, and CEO of Mara
Fred good to have you on the program. The decline
in the asset price this year, certainly you know one
hundred and twenty six thousand dollars that was a major
high earlier this year, that was a big moment for
the cryptocurrency. But down close to thirty or more than
thirty percent from that. How much lower does bitcoin go?
Speaker 4 (01:25):
I think your bitcoin at this level is finding support
in the kind of eighty four thousand range, which is
just about where the break even point is on most
ETF purchases Bitcoin ETF purchases, and that seems to be
a level of support where essentially people large investors who
are trying to defend their positions.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
If you would want to keep.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
It above that level, which if it falls below that,
you'd see more salesman's probably out of the ETFs back
into liquidity and bitcoin. It's very much by global liquidity.
You had the expectations of more from the FED and
(02:09):
you know, more clarity around market structure. But I think
what you really have to look at is there was
a huge run up in the kind of August through
September into October.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Pure period, and you.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Know a number of US felt the market was frothy
in the beginning of Q three and things were getting
a little bit overheated.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
And you know, now we've seen some of that come off.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
You've also seen a lot of money that rotated into
AI now rotating out of AI and starting to rotate
into more Dow stocks. And so I think you're generally
seeing a risk off environment. Risk off tends to drive
people out of bitcoin. But the liquidity that the federal
government is going to inject in the marketplace now that
(02:55):
quantitative tightening is over, we're starting to see easing again.
We believe that will bode well the dollars down, which
also vodes well for bitcoin. And I think you're going
to continue to see bitcoin appreciate.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
But you've got to realize it's a very large acid class.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
It's a couple of trillion dollars in size, and it
takes a lot to move the price. And I think
what we're seeing now is just some healthier tracement.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Hey, if I may just jump in for a moment,
you know, I am wondering, Fred, you say that it's
a risk off environment, and yet I'm looking at an
S and P five hundred that's still near it's all
time high, you know, and we've seen quite a bounce
back when it comes to the S and P five
hundred also a.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Very big market.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So I'm just curious, you know, how do you square
that if we're seeing investors still willing to move into
the equity markets but not crypto, that disconnect.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Well, I think you have to in regards to crypto,
you have to look at the derivatives market, which is
much bigger than the actual spot bitcoin market, and you
have to see the sheer amount of leverage and positions
that have come off since the peak. You know, you've
gone from the ninety billion dollars range down to the
(04:14):
thirty billion dollars range of open positions, and so that's
a huge amount of leverage that comes off, which essentially
sucks wind out of the marketplace, and people have been
moving their money out of bitcoin and into other things.
I think you've also seen look at the AI stocks.
Most of the secondary AI stalks have all seen a
(04:35):
pretty large comdown since the peak, even stocks such as Oracle,
Look at Core, We've you know, look at these stocks
and how they've performed, and I think what you're seeing
is a rotation out of some of those and into
other stocks. And bitcoin is associated with technology, it's associated
with a risk on assets, and it's very associated with liquidity.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
So having said that, and you talked about the runn
that we saw earlier in terms of crypto, that where
it got to maybe like frothy levels. We're now at
what eighty seven thousand and eighty seven thousand, three hundred
and two and change. So what do you think should
be the level of crypto that makes more sense?
Speaker 4 (05:18):
I think you have to look at the long term trend.
But more importantly, go back a little over a year ago,
go fourteen fifteen months ago, no US money center bank
would deal with crypto related companies, nor would they take
crypto deposits, nor would they let you trade crypto, nor
would they let you wire money to crypto exchanges. Almost
(05:41):
and today you have every bank, including JP Morgan, now
moving ahead and doing all sorts of things with crypto.
You're seeing tokenization of assets. DTCC has now gotten a
no action letter from the SEC around tokenizing assets. You're
seeing all sorts of activities around the traditional finance environment
(06:02):
where they're embracing crypto. And I believe that what part
of the effect of that is you're now going to
see all sorts of things wrapped around crypto, which will
make the space much more relevant. But it takes time
for those products to take effect get launched. And I
think again, bitcoin has had a great run over the
(06:23):
past fifteen years. It's been one of the best performing
assets on record, and I think that we're going to
continue to see great performance out of bitcoin over the
coming years.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So, Fred, you're a bitcoin minor, you're also a bitcoin accumulator.
We've spoken to Eric Trump of American Bitcoin and I'm
curious he's also a minor, also an accumulator. What makes
your company different than American Bitcoin.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Well, any company that minds bitcoin is performing the exact
same service for the bitcoin network, which is essentially assembling
transactions into blocks and then competing to win the right
to essentially add that block to the blockchain. What differentiates
Mara from American Bitcoin A. We own all our rather
(07:12):
we own about seventy percent of our hosting operations.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
We're fully vertically integrated.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
We own power generation, We generate energy off of wind farms,
off of flare gas and oil fields.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
We operate on four continents. We also are fully vertically.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Integrated from a technology perspective, we operate our own pool.
We co founded the only US ASK manufacturer for bitcoin
mining A six. The rest of the market is all
dominated by Chinese companies, and we have been very proactive
in helping drive a lot of the growth of crypto
(07:49):
around partnerships with energy companies. And I think you know,
we're still considerably larger than American Bitcoin, not just in
our mining operations, but also in the amount of bigcoin
that we hold in our balance sheet.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
On the identity part of this, trying to understand what
the company looks like. You guys issued a statement this
week saying you're not a digital asset treasury firm, so
you should not be excluded from MSCI, Whereas the company
said it has been adopting a bitcoin treasury strategy by
holding its mind coins. What is the difference between being
a treasury company versus a company that adopts the treasury strategy.
(08:24):
Help us with the nuance there.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Sure, so, a bitcoin treasury company, for example, like Strategy
or micro Strategy as it's formerly known as, has acquired
all of its bitcoin by purchasing it.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Mara has mined the majority of its bitcoin.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
We've also purchased bitcoin the market, but most of our
bitcoin is the product of our mining operations. We have
chosen to hold our liquid assets in bitcoin because we believe,
again better to hold our cash in the best performing
asset class over the past fifteen years, than to in fiat,
which is continued losing its value, or just to hold
(09:03):
it in treasuries, which will only you know, pay a
dividend of you know, the low single digit percentage points.
So bitcoin has been an excellent place for us to
hold our cash and we'll continue to be so, we
believe over the long run. But we generate bitcoin by
mining bitcoin. We're not out in the market buying bitcoin
on a regular basis like micro strategy. We have from
(09:24):
time to time gone into the market and bought it
when we think it's very opportune. Last year, there was
an opportunity to buy bitcoin when it was in the
sixty ish thousand dollar range, and we bought bitcoin because
we had a feeling it was a belief allow that
it was going to go up, which it did. And
there are times where we're opportunistic like that. But we
(09:45):
sell bitcoin that we produce to fund our operating expenses,
so you know, We are not a company that holds
our bitcoin. Every single bitcoin that we have, we actually
sell bitcoin from production to fund our business.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
So we're an operating business.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Bitcoin mining is our primary business, and bitcoin just happens
to be how we.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Hold our funds.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Fred One thing. I'm just curious though, going back to
what we've seen in terms of the fatigue and the
price and bitcoin coming down. You know what's interesting is
and I'm just looking at some of our reporting and commentary.
You know, you've got a White House that's very much
favored or favoring the digital currency world. You have the
President declaring crypto a national priority. US Congress has passed
(10:28):
a landmark stable coin legislation, and bitcoin exchange traded funds
we're raking in billions of dollars. You know, we've seen acquisitions,
We've seen so much movement, and again I'm going back
to the decline that we've seen in crypto. It's a
pretty favorable environment. So, I mean, is all of the
good expectations in terms of news already priced in and
(10:52):
it can't get much better.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Now.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
I think, like anything, any asset will revert to mean,
and bitcoin is simply reverted to mean. It has most
probably overcorrected. But you had in the past six months
a huge amount of accumulation by the plethora of digital
asset treasury companies that were formed, you know, and the
(11:16):
you go back not too long ago, it was basically
micro strategy was the only real one you had met
a planet to a lesser extent, similar scientific was a
smaller one. And we were a large holder of bitcoin.
That was kind of it. And then all of a
sudden you had all sorts of companies come out of
the wood work.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
What did they do?
Speaker 4 (11:33):
They raised cash, They went and bought a bunch of bitcoin,
which drives the price up. Right, price comes up. People
started putting money into ETFs. You start getting bigger derivative positions.
It's a flywheel effective and if you just draw a
trend line over the past number of years, you'll see bitcoin.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
It's just reverted.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The name got to run.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Fred.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Thank you so much. Fred Tiel, Chairman and CE of Mayra,
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
We talked about this at the top. Bitcoin not having
a great year. It's headed for its fourth annual decline
in its history, and the first one that didn't coincide
with a major scandal or industry meltdown. So we're talking
about cryptocurrencies. The bitcoin specifically now nearly seven percent lower
for the year. It's down around thirty percent from its
October sixth all time high. Volumes low, and investors tim
(00:37):
baling a Bitcoin ETFs. You know about this, you do
a weekly bitcoin show, you.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Know, yeah. I mean the bear market means that bitcoin
has decoupled from stocks, the S and P five hundred
closing in at a record earlier this month, up sixteen
percent for the year. Bitcoin struggle to find footing. The
bitcoin minor and accumulator Mara Holdings knows all too well
about the drop. Its own stock down more than thirty
six percent so far this year. Nearly twenty eight percent
of the float is shorted, with more.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
We had to.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Paris and to Fred Teeley's chairman, and CEO of Mara
Fred good to have you on the program. The decline
in the asset price this year, certainly you know one
hundred and twenty six thousand dollars that was a major
high earlier this year, that was a big moment for
the cryptocurrency. But down close to thirty or more than
thirty percent from that. How much lower does bitcoin go?
Speaker 4 (01:25):
I think your bitcoin at this level is finding support
in the kind of eighty four thousand range, which is
just about where the break even point is on most
ETF purchases Bitcoin ETF purchases, and that seems to be
a level of support where essentially people large investors who
are trying to defend their positions.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
If you would want to keep.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
It above that level, which if it falls below that,
you'd see more salesman's probably out of the ETFs back
into liquidity and bitcoin. It's very much by global liquidity.
You had the expectations of more from the FED and
(02:09):
you know, more clarity around market structure. But I think
what you really have to look at is there was
a huge run up in the kind of August through
September into October.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Pure period, and you.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Know a number of US felt the market was frothy
in the beginning of Q three and things were getting
a little bit overheated.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
And you know, now we've seen some of that come off.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
You've also seen a lot of money that rotated into
AI now rotating out of AI and starting to rotate
into more Dow stocks. And so I think you're generally
seeing a risk off environment. Risk off tends to drive
people out of bitcoin. But the liquidity that the federal
government is going to inject in the marketplace now that
(02:55):
quantitative tightening is over, we're starting to see easing again.
We believe that will bode well the dollars down, which
also vodes well for bitcoin. And I think you're going
to continue to see bitcoin appreciate.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
But you've got to realize it's a very large acid class.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
It's a couple of trillion dollars in size, and it
takes a lot to move the price. And I think
what we're seeing now is just some healthier tracement.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Hey, if I may just jump in for a moment,
you know, I am wondering, Fred, you say that it's
a risk off environment, and yet I'm looking at an
S and P five hundred that's still near it's all
time high, you know, and we've seen quite a bounce
back when it comes to the S and P five
hundred also a.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Very big market.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So I'm just curious, you know, how do you square
that if we're seeing investors still willing to move into
the equity markets but not crypto, that disconnect.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Well, I think you have to in regards to crypto,
you have to look at the derivatives market, which is
much bigger than the actual spot bitcoin market, and you
have to see the sheer amount of leverage and positions
that have come off since the peak. You know, you've
gone from the ninety billion dollars range down to the
(04:14):
thirty billion dollars range of open positions, and so that's
a huge amount of leverage that comes off, which essentially
sucks wind out of the marketplace, and people have been
moving their money out of bitcoin and into other things.
I think you've also seen look at the AI stocks.
Most of the secondary AI stalks have all seen a
(04:35):
pretty large comdown since the peak, even stocks such as Oracle,
Look at Core, We've you know, look at these stocks
and how they've performed, and I think what you're seeing
is a rotation out of some of those and into
other stocks. And bitcoin is associated with technology, it's associated
with a risk on assets, and it's very associated with liquidity.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
So having said that, and you talked about the runn
that we saw earlier in terms of crypto, that where
it got to maybe like frothy levels. We're now at
what eighty seven thousand and eighty seven thousand, three hundred
and two and change. So what do you think should
be the level of crypto that makes more sense?
Speaker 4 (05:18):
I think you have to look at the long term trend.
But more importantly, go back a little over a year ago,
go fourteen fifteen months ago, no US money center bank
would deal with crypto related companies, nor would they take
crypto deposits, nor would they let you trade crypto, nor
would they let you wire money to crypto exchanges. Almost
(05:41):
and today you have every bank, including JP Morgan, now
moving ahead and doing all sorts of things with crypto.
You're seeing tokenization of assets. DTCC has now gotten a
no action letter from the SEC around tokenizing assets. You're
seeing all sorts of activities around the traditional finance environment
(06:02):
where they're embracing crypto. And I believe that what part
of the effect of that is you're now going to
see all sorts of things wrapped around crypto, which will
make the space much more relevant. But it takes time
for those products to take effect get launched. And I
think again, bitcoin has had a great run over the
(06:23):
past fifteen years. It's been one of the best performing
assets on record, and I think that we're going to
continue to see great performance out of bitcoin over the
coming years.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So, Fred, you're a bitcoin minor, you're also a bitcoin accumulator.
We've spoken to Eric Trump of American Bitcoin and I'm
curious he's also a minor, also an accumulator. What makes
your company different than American Bitcoin.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Well, any company that minds bitcoin is performing the exact
same service for the bitcoin network, which is essentially assembling
transactions into blocks and then competing to win the right
to essentially add that block to the blockchain. What differentiates
Mara from American Bitcoin A. We own all our rather
(07:12):
we own about seventy percent of our hosting operations.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
We're fully vertically integrated.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
We own power generation, We generate energy off of wind farms,
off of flare gas and oil fields.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
We operate on four continents. We also are fully vertically.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Integrated from a technology perspective, we operate our own pool.
We co founded the only US ASK manufacturer for bitcoin
mining A six. The rest of the market is all
dominated by Chinese companies, and we have been very proactive
in helping drive a lot of the growth of crypto
(07:49):
around partnerships with energy companies. And I think you know,
we're still considerably larger than American Bitcoin, not just in
our mining operations, but also in the amount of bigcoin
that we hold in our balance sheet.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
On the identity part of this, trying to understand what
the company looks like. You guys issued a statement this
week saying you're not a digital asset treasury firm, so
you should not be excluded from MSCI, Whereas the company
said it has been adopting a bitcoin treasury strategy by
holding its mind coins. What is the difference between being
a treasury company versus a company that adopts the treasury strategy.
(08:24):
Help us with the nuance there.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Sure, so, a bitcoin treasury company, for example, like Strategy
or micro Strategy as it's formerly known as, has acquired
all of its bitcoin by purchasing it.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Mara has mined the majority of its bitcoin.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
We've also purchased bitcoin the market, but most of our
bitcoin is the product of our mining operations. We have
chosen to hold our liquid assets in bitcoin because we believe,
again better to hold our cash in the best performing
asset class over the past fifteen years, than to in fiat,
which is continued losing its value, or just to hold
(09:03):
it in treasuries, which will only you know, pay a
dividend of you know, the low single digit percentage points.
So bitcoin has been an excellent place for us to
hold our cash and we'll continue to be so, we
believe over the long run. But we generate bitcoin by
mining bitcoin. We're not out in the market buying bitcoin
on a regular basis like micro strategy. We have from
(09:24):
time to time gone into the market and bought it
when we think it's very opportune. Last year, there was
an opportunity to buy bitcoin when it was in the
sixty ish thousand dollar range, and we bought bitcoin because
we had a feeling it was a belief allow that
it was going to go up, which it did. And
there are times where we're opportunistic like that. But we
(09:45):
sell bitcoin that we produce to fund our operating expenses,
so you know, We are not a company that holds
our bitcoin. Every single bitcoin that we have, we actually
sell bitcoin from production to fund our business.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
So we're an operating business.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Bitcoin mining is our primary business, and bitcoin just happens
to be how we.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Hold our funds.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Fred One thing. I'm just curious though, going back to
what we've seen in terms of the fatigue and the
price and bitcoin coming down. You know what's interesting is
and I'm just looking at some of our reporting and commentary.
You know, you've got a White House that's very much
favored or favoring the digital currency world. You have the
President declaring crypto a national priority. US Congress has passed
(10:28):
a landmark stable coin legislation, and bitcoin exchange traded funds
we're raking in billions of dollars. You know, we've seen acquisitions,
We've seen so much movement, and again I'm going back
to the decline that we've seen in crypto. It's a
pretty favorable environment. So, I mean, is all of the
good expectations in terms of news already priced in and
(10:52):
it can't get much better.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Now.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
I think, like anything, any asset will revert to mean,
and bitcoin is simply reverted to mean. It has most
probably overcorrected. But you had in the past six months
a huge amount of accumulation by the plethora of digital
asset treasury companies that were formed, you know, and the
(11:16):
you go back not too long ago, it was basically
micro strategy was the only real one you had met
a planet to a lesser extent, similar scientific was a
smaller one. And we were a large holder of bitcoin.
That was kind of it. And then all of a
sudden you had all sorts of companies come out of
the wood work.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
What did they do?
Speaker 4 (11:33):
They raised cash, They went and bought a bunch of bitcoin,
which drives the price up. Right, price comes up. People
started putting money into ETFs. You start getting bigger derivative positions.
It's a flywheel effective and if you just draw a
trend line over the past number of years, you'll see bitcoin.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
It's just reverted.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The name got to run.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Fred.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Thank you so much. Fred Tiel, Chairman and CE of Mayra,
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
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