Bitcoin’s wild decade produced two very different stories on Wall Street. MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA | MARA Price Prediction), then known as Marathon Digital, focused on running mining rigs, while Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), the software firm formerly known as MicroStrategy, bet its balance sheet on holding the coins themselves. Same theme, vastly different outcomes.
Two Roads Into the Same Trade
MARA spent the decade pivoting from a patent-licensing shell into one of the largest public bitcoin miners, recently scaling to 72.2 EH/s of energized hash rate and announcing a Starwood joint venture to convert roughly 90% of non-hosted capacity to AI and HPC. The cost has been brutal: a $1.30 billion Q1 2026 net loss as bitcoin fell and mark-to-market accounting bit hard.
Strategy went the other way. Under Michael Saylor’s 2020 treasury pivot, it stacked bitcoin using stock and convertible debt, reaching 818,334 BTC by May 3, 2026, while still running a profitable software unit (subscription revenue up 59% year on year). Its preferred-stock complex, led by STRC, scaled to an $8.5 billion market cap.
One Holding Lost Money. The Other Crushed the Market.
Here is what $1,000 actually became, using split- and dividend-adjusted prices through June 22, 2026.
| 1-Year Return | 5-Year Return | 10-Year Return | |
|---|---|---|---|
| MARA | +3.7% ($1,037) | −46.22% ($537.80) | −64.03% ($359.70) |
| Strategy | −70.39% ($296.10) | +97.94% ($1,979.40) | +532.28% ($6,322.80) |
| S&P 500 | +25.26% ($1,252.60) | +76.15% ($1,761.50) | +266.26% ($3,662.60) |
The kicker: Bitcoin itself returned +9,493.71% over 10 years. Both equities underperformed the underlying asset wildly. MARA’s heavy share dilution and energy costs eroded its leverage, while Strategy is now down 70.4% in the past year as Bitcoin slipped to roughly $62,115.
How the Bull and Bear Cases Stack Up Now
For Strategy, the bull case is leveraged, taxable bitcoin exposure with a working software business attached, while the bear case is its beta of 3.4 combined with an $8.17 billion debt load and preferred dividend obligations. The past year shows how fast capital-markets reliance turns ugly when bitcoin rolls over.
For MARA, the AI/HPC pivot is interesting, yet there are no signed AI tenant leases yet, margins are deeply negative, and the 10-year record reads as a cautionary tale about owning the picks and shovels rather than the gold.
For most retirement-minded readers, the index did the job: $3,662 with a fraction of the heartburn. On balance, the index delivered the steadier outcome, Strategy carried the leveraged upside with high volatility, and MARA’s record remains the most challenged of the three.
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