{{articledata.title}}

Cryptoprowl.com / Investors looking for a new way to play the cryptocurrency trade should consider small-cap Bitcoin (CRYPTO: $BTC ) miner MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: $MARA ).

After being hammered as the price of Bitcoin has been cut in half over the last six months, MARA stock is suddenly on an upswing.

MARA Holdings, formerly known as Marathon Digital, has seen its share price rise nearly 10% since the end of February.

The sharp and sudden rebound comes as MARA Holdings, long known for mining BTC, pivots to focus more on high‑performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (A.I.) data centres.

Management at MARA Holdings have announced a plan to convert select Bitcoin mining sites into HPC and A.I. data centre campuses, starting with around one gigawatt of capacity.

This playbook is not unique to MARA Holdings. Several other crypto miners, such as Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: $RIOT ), Core Scientific (NASDAQ: $CORZ ), and Hut 8 (NASDAQ: $HUT ) have made similar moves.

Investors are nevertheless applauding the shift towards A.I. data centres as the price of Bitcoin continues to decline, with the largest cryptocurrency currently trading at $66,900 U.S.

Demand for data centre power and compute capacity is soaring as mega-cap technology companies such as Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: $META ) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: $MSFT ) look to scale A.I. models.

As such, MARA Holdings has found itself with a strong transition into HPC and A.I. data centres and away from being a pureplay Bitcoin miner.

With a market capitalization of $3.5 billion U.S., MARA Holdings is a small-cap stock. It also trades at a cheap valuation of only five times future earnings estimates.

The stock is not without risk, having declined 34% over the last 12 months. And there's no dividend on offer to shareholders.

However, now could be an opportune time to load-up on shares of MARA stock as the company morphs into a hybrid BTC miner and A.I. data centre company.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) recently reaffirmed a buy rating on MARA stock, arguing that the company's owned data centres, notably in Texas, gives it a competitive advantage.

MARA stock is currently trading at $9.08 U.S. per share.