Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings (MARA) shares jumped nearly 4% in post-market trading after the company posted record revenue for its second quarter, beating Wall Street’s expectations.

MARA reported revenue of $238.5 million, a 64% rise from $145.1 million in the same quarter a year ago, according to an earnings presentation. The mining firm said the increase was primarily due to a 50% rise in the average bitcoin price during the quarter. MARA’s revenue also beat the average analyst estimate of $227.9 million, according to the FactSet data.

The company mined 2,358 bitcoin in the quarter, a 3% increase from the previous quarter. Energized hashrate or mining machines that are currently online rose by 6% to 57.4 EH/s. MARA is aiming to reach 75 EH/s by the end of this year.

The miner, which started buying bitcoin in the open market, currently has nearly 50,000 BTC on its balance sheet, making it the second-largest publicly traded company, after Strategy (MSTR), to hold bitcoin in its treasury. At the current spot price of $117,618, the holdings would be worth almost $6 billion.

However, unlike many other bitcoin treasury companies, the firm said that it doesn’t just hold BTC on its balance sheet; rather, it actively manages them. It has about 31% or 15,550 bitcoin loaned, actively managed or pledged as collateral as part of its treasury management.

«We are more than a bitcoin treasury company,» MARA said in the letter. «And because we are operators, not just holders, we view bitcoin as a productive asset. We actively deploy portions of our holdings to enhance returns and strengthen our long-term capital position,» it added.

NEW YORK — Roman Storm, the Tornado Cash developer standing trial in Manhattan on charges that the privacy tool he created helped hackers and other cyber criminals launder more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds, won’t take the stand, his lawyers told the court on Tuesday.

Storm told District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that he was aware that he had the right to testify in his own defense but chose not to. After Storm made his decision, his defense team, led by Keri Axel and Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP, rested their case on Tuesday afternoon.

Over three days of witness testimony, the defense argued that Storm was merely the developer of a legitimate privacy tool that was sometimes exploited by bad actors – something which he and his co-founders could do little to actually stop, because the Tornado Cash protocol and its pools were immutable. While Storm and the other Tornado Cash co-founders made money from the sale of TORN tokens, they didn’t profit directly from Tornado Cash, witnesses testified. And, though prosecutors attempted to portray Storm and his co-founders as indifferent — even callous — to the plight of hack victims whose money was laundered through Tornado Cash, witness testimony, group chats and messages showed that Storm and his co-founders were unhappy with hackers using their platform.

In messages between Storm and his co-founder, Roman Semenov (who also faces the same charges and remains at large), Storm expressed concern in the wake of major hacks, including the 2022 hack of Ronin Bridge, in which North Korean hackers stole $600 million and funneled a portion of the proceeds through Tornado Cash. In the chat, Storm and Semenov discussed adding the hackers’ wallet to the Tornado Cash user interface’s blocked list.

“We urgently need to tell everyone we do not want these individuals to the front,” Storm told Semenov.

In another string of messages following the Ronin Bridge hack, Storm told Semenov that the hackers’ use of Tornado Cash was “very serious.”

After the 2022 hack of the Harmony Horizon Bridge, in which some proceeds flowed through Tornado Cash, Storm — messaging with Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly Capital that invested almost $1 million in Tornado Cash parent PepperSec Inc. — said: “I’m glad those fuckers are detected.”

Value of privacy

Storm’s defense elicited witness testimony detailing non-criminal reasons why someone might want to use a tool like Tornado Cash to separate their identity from their financial transactions.

Dr. Matthew Green, renowned cryptography expert and professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, told the jury on Tuesday that the lack of privacy was a “bug” in the majority of cryptocurrencies, exposing users to threats from hackers and other attackers.

Green — who offered his expert witness services to Storm’s defense for free — explained that, without a tool like Tornado Cash, Ethereum users are exposing sensitive personal information with every transaction, including how much money they have, what they spend it on and who they associate with. This presents a range of security risks, including phishing attempts, fraud and in-person “wrench attacks,” which Green explained have been “accelerating” in recent years.

Next steps

Whether the jury will side with the prosecution’s view of Tornado Cash or the defense’s has yet to be decided.

Tomorrow, both sides will have a chance to summarize their arguments in closing statements to the jury, after which the jury will be instructed by the judge on the charges against Storm and then released to deliberate.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the use of in-kind creation and redemption processes for all spot bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs), marking a significant shift in the regulator’s approach to digital assets under its new leadership.

The decision allows authorized participants—large institutional investors who facilitate ETF liquidity—to create and redeem ETF shares directly in BTC or ETH, rather than having to use cash. The mechanism is widely seen as more efficient and secure as it lets authorized participants to closely track investor demand and adjust ETF share supply in real time, without the need to convert assets back and forth into fiat currency.

This marks the SEC’s first major crypto-friendly policy move since Paul Atkins was named chair of the agency earlier this year. Atkins, a former SEC commissioner known for his market-friendly views, has long advocated for a more open regulatory approach toward digital assets.

«“It’s a new day at the SEC,» said Atkins in a press release. «A key priority of my chairmanship is developing a fit-for-purpose regulatory framework for crypto asset markets,” he continued. «I am pleased the Commission approved these orders permitting in-kind creations and redemptions for a host of crypto asset ETPs. Investors will benefit from these approvals, as they will make these products less costly and more efficient.»

The shift comes after BlackRock filed a request in January to allow in-kind transactions for its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), and other issuers, including Fidelity and Ark Invest, quickly followed.

Until now, all approved spot bitcoin ETFs—first greenlit by the SEC in January 2024 —were only allowed to operate with cash creations and redemptions. That requirement added operational complexity and was widely viewed as a barrier to efficiency for institutional market makers.

The SEC also approved an increase in position limits for options trading on IBIT, a move that will allow traders to hold larger options positions tied to the fund.

Position limits are regulatory caps that restrict the number of options contracts a trader or institution can control in a single security to prevent market manipulation or excessive risk. By raising these limits, the SEC is signaling greater comfort with the liquidity and maturity of the Bitcoin ETF market, and giving institutional investors more flexibility to hedge or express views on the fund’s performance.

The changes could significantly increase institutional participation in both ETF groups by reducing friction for arbitrage and hedging strategies.

The SEC’s decision underscores a growing willingness under Atkins’ leadership to treat crypto assets within the same regulatory frameworks applied to traditional markets.