Firstly, let me say, I hate how energy-intensive Bitcoin is and would never support the market for mining it in the long-term. However, below are what I believe to be a series of perceived catalysts for MARA as a swing play.
Yes, some are more compelling than others. And yes, some should never even be graced with the name 'catalyst', but in the era of Lambos and rocketships, they will very much (unfortunately) be taken as such by those more naive to the space.
What does MARA do?
MARA mines Bitcoin.
What is Bitcoin?
In essence, a digital currency. A form of value not governed by any government or centralized institution. Hopefully this isn't news to you, but if not, here is a good place to start.
What is mining?
In essence, the process that is required to generate new bitcoins (better explanation here). Much like mining for gold or drilling for oil, you need to follow a process in order to generate more Bitcoin. Much like other commodities too, the price that they are selling for has a big impact on how profitable miners are.
Why MARA, why now?
Bitcoin has been flirting with the $10,000 mark for some time now. $10k for Bitcoin is a bit like $1 for a penny stock. It's tough to break, but once you do, a lot of heads start to turn. If Bitcoin moves, MARA is more than probably going to follow suit.
Catalysts

• Last time Bitcoin broke $10k price on 2nd June, MARA jumped from 0.72 to 0.91 (26% up) at the opening and ended the day at 0.82 (14% up). Bitcoin chart & MARA Chart
• Companies with exact same business model are up 100-200% in the past month (DPW & NETE)
• Message volume is up 40% on MARA StockTwits ("change in social interest or social momentum.")
• This completely bonkers analyst set a price forecast of $64 (i.e. a 5825%+ increase)
• Convertible Note Fully Converted to Equity reducing long term debt reduced to zero in May (here)
• The sector is heating up due to Bitcoin price increases recently. MARA have managed to secure additional mining capacity despite it becoming increasingly hard to do so.
  
  • "The company now has additional mining capacity scheduled to arrive in May, July, and August of this year. Only one NASDAQ listed company has announced more hashing power coming online this summer than Marathon". (here)
  • "With the recent price increase of Bitcoin, the forward months of each batch of production capacity of Bitcoin miners has been selling out. The company has worked very aggressively to acquire miners with the nearest delivery dates so the miners may be put into production as soon as possible." (here)
• Company Estimates 280% Increase in Operating Hashrate to 129 PH/s when miners are received and deployed in July (here)
  
• Q2 revenue should show a significant jump given the additional capacity and rise in Bitcoin price.
  
  • Reported revenues of $592,487 during the three months ended March 31, 2020 - up 157% from the same period year before.
  • This was with far less mining capacity and a Bitcoin price sitting far lower at between $7,000-8,500. (here)

TL;DR: I created an easier way for non-programmers to access their favorite Bitcoin and cryptocurrency services within Google Sheets. You can find it here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spreadstreet/fghpmppcbabgnpekploacbjijhppnkpp?authuser=0
Hey all,
I know some of the members in the group prefer to use spreadsheets (including myself) so I created a Google Sheets add-in that pulls in certain API endpoints from popular Ethereum and cryptocurrency services. I never had the time to develop software engineering skills, but the tool allows regular joes like myself to harness the power of APIs.
Requirements:

1. Google Sheets
   
2. Spreadstreet add-in (can download from within sheet)
   

Services and endpoints included:
Bitcoin Charts

• Markets: Returns a table with elements from each market

Bitfinex

• Ticker
  
• Trades
  
• Book
  
• Candles
  

Bittrex

• Markets: Used to get the open and available trading markets at bittrex along with other metadata.

Blockchain

• Difficulty: A relative measure of how difficult it is to find a new block.

Stock Twits

• Recent Symbol Messages: Return the most recent 30 messages for the symbol

GDAX

• Products: Get a list of available currency pairs for trading
• Historic Rates: Historic rates for a product. Rates are returned in grouped buckets based on requested granularity.

Cryptonator

• Complete Ticker: Returns actual volume-weighted prices, total 24h volume, rate change as well as prices and volumes across all connected exchanges

Cryptocompare

• Mining Contracts: Returns all the mining contracts.
• Mining Equipment: Used to get all the mining equipment available on the website. It returns an array of mining equipment objects.

CoinMarketCap

• Ticker: The ticker is a high level overview of the state of the market. It shows you the current best bid and ask, as well as the last trade price.

Hoping this is something that is useful to the group, and I am more than happy to help peeps setup the sheet so they can use it. Just send me a message on here or to my inbox.
Full disclosure
I have set the add-in to be a 14-day free trial, and $15 a month after. I am currently exploring ways to make the service free, such as:

1. Sponsored connections: Free connections that anybody can use where the service pays me to host them on the add-in
2. Community submitted connectors
3. Rate-limited free level (currently do not have development talent to implement this)

I am in no way affiliated with any of the services listed, except for the actual add-in itself. I just happen to find the services very valuable.
Helpful template to get you started
I created a sheet that has some initial instructions, as well as a setup for Bitfinex. It brings in candles data, and recent tweets related to the symbol of your choosing. You can find that sheet here (File -> Make a copy):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P5WkVIk-e8jhVMS7TaptSKI83c1Ut5crLM1r8CUFUXc/edit?usp=sharing
A note on security:
Our industry is rife with corruption. I know the hesitation involved with installing something that is script-based, like a Google Sheets add-in. I am here to help ease those fears with a couple of facts:

1. This is a U.S. based company, and I am a one-man show (for now)
2. My business location, phone number, and e-mail are all public knowledge as required by the laws of the United States
3. I am here to provide a valuable service, and something that I hope becomes a treasured tool within the space
4. The app is on the Google store, and they do a full review of all applications before allowing them to be pushed to the store. While not perfect, you can be reasonably assured they catch most malicious programs
5. If you are still hesitant, there are a couple of ways to test it without installing on your main computer, such as testing it in a virtual environment first.
6. Currently the add-on has no authenticated endpoints. Before I implement these, I will put our code under a strict third-party security review that will be posted for everyone to see. I will not release that version until we are certain security is top notch

Additional Resources
Original Medium Post: https://medium.com/spreadstreet/an-easy-way-to-connect-digital-currency-services-to-google-sheets-21f18301f881
Help documents: https://spreadstreet.io/docs/
Using the built-in "SS" function: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqqEQ9ArDc
Cheers, John

I posted this on our blog last week but since this community is very proactive about trying out new opportunities I thought people should be aware of CryptoLocker and the danger it could cause. I know it is not the normal type of post that goes here but you can never be too careful.

If you read only one article today read the one linked below…and then forward it to anybody you care about. This is one of the worst possible malwares you can get and if you get it at work it could affect everyone as it encrypts any shared drive’s files you have access to. Yes, network drives are all in play with this malware.
Here is the article from Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/youre-infected-if-you-want-to-see-your-data-again-pay-us-300-in-bitcoins/
Here is the two paragraphs from the article I want to make sure you read carefully:

It started when an end user in the client’s accounting department received an e-mail purporting to come from Intuit. Yes, the attached archived zip file with an executable inside should have been a dead giveaway that this message was malicious and was in no way affiliated with Intuit. But accounting employees are used to receiving e-mails from financial companies. When the receiver clicked on it, he saw a white box flash briefly on his screen but didn’t notice anything else out of the ordinary. He then locked his computer and attended several meetings.
Within a few hours, the company’s IT department received word of a corrupt file stored on a network drive that was available to multiple employees, including the one who received the malicious e-mail. A quick investigation soon uncovered other corrupted files, most or all of which had been accessed by the accounting employee. By the time CryptoLocker had run its course, hundreds of gigabytes worth of company data was no longer available.

If you want to listen to security expert Steve Gibson explain what it does and why it is so nasty you can listen to Security Now 427 here: http://twit.tv/show/security-now/427
How can you protect yourself from this?

• Be Smart with Links and Attachments - Never open an attachment in an email you are not expecting. Hover over links to make sure they go to somewhere you recognize before you click on them, especially links in emails.
  
• Act Quickly - If you think you have infected your machine with a malware, first thing you should do is unplug the internet cable from your machine or turn off wifi (you don’t want an internet connection) and notify whoever is responsible for your maintaining your machine. If you can’t get a hold of them immediately power off your machine until they get back with you. Try to keep track of what happened and what caused it.
  
• Have a Cold Backup - It is smart to have an external hard drive you back up to regularly and then disconnect. You can also use a service like Carbonite to back up to the cloud.
  

UPDATE: Per jordanhansen13 in the comments here is a great thread covering CryptoLocker in /sysadmin: http://www.reddit.com/sysadmin/comments/1p32lx/cryptolocker_recap_a_new_guide_to_the_bleepingest/