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MARA Holdings targets bitcoin quantum threat and network resilience with new foundation
Bitcoin’s future is not guaranteed, said CEO Fred Thiel at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas.
Apr 27, 2026, 5:49 p.m.
What to know:
- The MARA Foundation will fund open source development, education, and research, including work on Bitcoin’s fee market and emerging threats like quantum computing.
- The company is committing $100,000 to nonprofits, with the recipient selected through a community vote at the Bitcoin Conference
Thiel described bitcoin as “a public utility that nobody owns, but everybody depends on,” adding that decentralization “doesn’t mean it runs on itself, it means responsibility is distributed.”
The foundation will focus on maintaining bitcoin’s core properties as “sound, durable money,” while advocating for its open and global use. Key priorities include supporting the network’s security budget, particularly the development of a sustainable transaction-fee market, and funding research into emerging risks, such as quantum computing.
MARA also plans to fund open source development across scaling, mining, and user infrastructure, expand access to self-custody, and promote financial sovereignty worldwide.
