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In one interview with CNBC on Monday, Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA), shared his bullish view on Bitcoin. He highlighted growing institutional interest and a favorable regulatory environment that could propel the BTC price to new highs.
Thiel dismissed the impact of Bitcoin’s recent halving, saying, “I don’t think the halving had any effect.” Instead, he attributed Bitcoin’s price rise to the introduction of spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) earlier this year. “In January you had the ETFs that launched and suddenly created the beginnings of some institutional interest,” he noted.
Institutions are just waiting to buy up Bitcoin
While the initial investments in these ETFs consisted mainly of the private sector, Thiel noticed a shift as institutional players began to enter the market. “Then you started to see some pension funds starting to buy ETFs and Bitcoin-related stocks like our stock or MicroStrategy’s,” he added.
The CEO emphasized the potential impact of political developments on the BTC market. “You know, with the election, Donald Trump ran on a platform that was very pro-Bitcoin: strategic reserves of Bitcoin, mining in the US, etc.,” Thiel said. He suggested that such an attitude could lead to a more supportive regulatory environment in the United States.
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“What that has ultimately created is this enormous belief that the regulatory environment for Bitcoin and crypto is suddenly going to get much better, that the US is going to double down and potentially really invest in Bitcoin,” he explained. This expected shift could put pressure on other countries to adopt similar policies, boosting global adoption.
Thiel also pointed to robust market dynamics that are absorbing selling pressure from long-term holders. “Every Bitcoin that was bought made a profit, and you started to liquidate long-term holders who had held Bitcoin for years a little bit to make some profit,” he said. Nevertheless, he emphasized the resilience of the market: “There is so much demand in the market that it just keeps absorbing.”
Responding to concerns about Bitcoin’s notorious volatility, Thiel claimed that significant declines could be a thing of the past, at least in the short term. “The volatility of the last few years, where you would peak and then see a 20% or 30% decline, I think is gone, at least for the short term,” he said. He believes that institutional investors are ready to enter the market aggressively. “I think we’re going to essentially see institutions waiting to buy up Bitcoin,” Thiel predicted.
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He cited recent actions by major companies to support his view. “If you look at MicroStrategy, it is [issuing a] $3 billion bond; they are buying Bitcoin very aggressively,” he said. “We raised a $1 billion bond the same week as Michael Saylor with a 0% coupon, and we went out to acquire hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin.” Thiel emphasized that this trend is gaining momentum: “A lot of people are starting to do this now.”
Concluding his insights, Thiel expressed confidence in Bitcoin’s upward trajectory. “Anyone who’s selling is selling in a market where there’s enough demand, and I think we’ll continue to see the Bitcoin price going up for the foreseeable future – you know, up and down, up and down – but overall the trend is upward,” he said.
Particularly Cantor Fitzgerald recently amended the price target for MARA from $33 to $42. The review follows Mara Holdings’ completion of a substantial $1 billion convertible bond offering last week. Of the $980 million raised, Mara used $199 million to repurchase $222 million in principal amount of its 2026 convertible notes. With another $781 million in proceeds, the company plans to purchase additional Bitcoin, using a strategy similar to MicroStrategy (MSTR).
However, unlike MicroStrategy, which focuses purely on capital market maneuvers to accumulate Bitcoin, Mara also operates the largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining operation by hash rate. Analysts at Cantor highlight this as a key differentiator with bullish potential.
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $92,531.
Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com