The past year has given the Bitcoin industry both momentum and perspective: meaningful progress in 2025 was followed by a pullback in early 2026 that refocused attention on execution. But Bitcoin 2026 was not a victory lap. It was a working session for an industry confronting harder questions than it asked a year ago. How does Bitcoin ensure its long-term security and what powers the next phase of growth?
MARA arrived with a clear point of view. More importantly, we showed how that point of view is taking shape in practice: through the launch of the MARA Foundation, a differentiated approach to energy and infrastructure, and continued engagement in the policy conversations shaping the future of the industry.
Maintain: Strengthening Bitcoin’s Foundation
Monday morning MARA Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel took the Nakamoto Stage to introduce the MARA Foundation.
The Foundation is a mission-driven initiative focused on the parts of the Bitcoin ecosystem that are essential to the network’s long-term strength but are often underfunded because no single operator is directly responsible for them. Its priorities include:
- Bitcoin security research, including emerging threats like quantum computing
- Open-source development, supporting those maintaining and improving Bitcoin
- Accessibility, expanding the tools that enable more people to use Bitcoin
- Policy and advocacy, working to keep Bitcoin open, permissionless, and protected
- Education, for users, developers, and policymakers who are all still early in understanding what this technology can do for humanity
"Bitcoin is the most important decentralized system ever created, but its future is not guaranteed. It depends on what all of us do next. Not just as companies, not just as investors, but as stewards." – Fred Thiel
The Foundation’s first initiative reflected that commitment. MARA pledged a $100,000 contribution to one of three pre-selected nonprofits, with the recipient chosen by the Bitcoin community itself. The candidates were Libreria de Satoshi, which expands Bitcoin technical education across languages and geographies; 256 Foundation, which supports open-source mining hardware and software development; and SateNet, which builds low-cost wireless internet powered by Bitcoin in the Global South.
Voting ran from Monday morning through Wednesday afternoon across the MARA Foundation website and the booth on the show floor. By the time voting closed, the community had cast nearly 5,000 verified votes. The result: 256 Foundation was awarded the $100,000 contribution.
256 Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to funding the open-source Bitcoin mining stack: hardware, firmware, pool software, and the educational work around them. Why that matters comes down to the reality of mining tools today. Most ASIC miners around the world run closed-source firmware they cannot independently audit or modify. Projects funded by the 256 Foundation are the public-good infrastructure that keeps hardware diversity, transparency, and small-scale participation alive.
Industrial-scale and home-scale mining usually get treated as separate worlds, but they depend on the same supply chain and the same firmware. To remain fully decentralized, Bitcoin needs an open-source mining stack. As a Bitcoin miner, there is no more fitting place for our foundation's first grant.
Power: Making the AI + Bitcoin Convergence Thesis a Reality
The conference reinforced a second theme for MARA: the future of Bitcoin will be shaped not only by hash rate, but by infrastructure, energy strategy, and policy.
Across the conference, MARA leaders participated in a series of conversations that reflected that broader view. Jayson Browder, SVP of Government Affairs and Social Responsibility, spoke about Bitcoin mining’s role on the grid and the policy environment shaping the industry. Fred Thiel discussed the convergence of Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing. Chief Product and Technology Officer Nir Rikovitch addressed who can actually deliver on AI capacity promises. CFO Salman Khan brought the discussion back to capital discipline and strategic allocation.
Taken together, those panels pointed to one core idea: the key constraint is not simply compute demand, but access to energized capacity.
Bitcoin mining and AI are often framed as competitors for scarce power, when in reality, they are complementary workloads. Bitcoin mining is a tool for flexibility and optimization: an interruptible load that monetizes power from day one and absorbs surplus capacity on the grid. AI is a tool for value creation: high-value compute that earns a premium per megawatt over time. Both belong on the same energy stack. The operators best positioned for the future will control energized capacity and route it to its highest-value workload.
The morning after the conference wrapped, MARA announced an agreement to acquire Long Ridge Energy & Power: a 505 MW combined-cycle gas plant and 1,600-acre campus in Hannibal, Ohio. The day after we argued on stage that energized capacity is the bottleneck, we moved to control more of it. Read the full announcement here.
One Operating Posture
What connected MARA’s presence at Bitcoin 2026 was not a set of unrelated announcements. It was a single operating posture.
The launch of the MARA Foundation put long-term ecosystem support at the center of the event. MARA’s panel discussions made the case that infrastructure and energy must move together. Long Ridge proved that argument. Together, they reflect an approach built around supporting Bitcoin, investing in power, and helping shape a more durable operating environment for digital infrastructure.
That is the work. Bitcoin 2026 was an opportunity to show how MARA is doing it.
Learn more about the MARA Foundation. Visit foundation.mara.com.
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