MARA stock slips as bitcoin fails at $90,000; Fed minutes in focus

MARA stock slips as bitcoin fails at $90,000; Fed minutes in focus

NEW YORK, December 30, 2025, 03:23 ET — Market closed

  • MARA ended Monday down about 1.1% at $9.49, with bitcoin off roughly 2% near $87,900.
  • Crypto-linked miners tracked a pullback in the token amid thin year-end trading.
  • Traders are watching Fed minutes later Tuesday and whether MARA holds near Monday’s low.

MARA Holdings Inc shares slipped 1.1% to $9.49 in the last session, after trading between $9.38 and $9.84 on volume of about 29.6 million shares. Bitcoin fell about 2% to $87,869.

The move matters because bitcoin miners tend to amplify swings in the underlying token. They earn revenue in bitcoin while paying many costs — including power and equipment — in dollars, which can widen the impact of crypto price moves on equity valuations.

Bitcoin retreated toward $87,000 after failing to hold above $90,000, a level traders have treated as technical resistance, as thin year-end volumes and outflows from U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds weighed, Investing.com reported. Spot bitcoin ETFs hold bitcoin and trade like stocks, giving investors a regulated way to get exposure.

Other U.S.-listed miners moved in the same direction, with Riot Platforms down about 1.8% and CleanSpark off roughly 1.8% on the day.

“The market is focused on next year… I won’t take much of a signal from this,” Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Capital Markets, said of holiday-thinned trading. Reuters

For miners, the other key variable is network difficulty — a measure of how hard it is to mine bitcoin as competition rises. Higher difficulty generally means miners need more computing power and energy to earn the same bitcoin rewards.

MARA has also been pitching itself as a digital energy and infrastructure company while exploring adjacent compute markets, including high-performance computing, or HPC, used to train and run AI models. The company said it expects an investment agreement to close in or around the fourth quarter of 2025 that would give it a 64% stake in Exaion, an HPC and secure cloud infrastructure provider.

In the near term, traders have treated MARA as a clean read-through on crypto risk appetite. That keeps the focus on whether bitcoin can regain $90,000 and whether ETF flows stabilise after recent redemptions.

Before the next session, the main macro catalyst is the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s December policy meeting later Tuesday. Any shift in perceived rate-cut timing can ripple quickly into high-volatility assets such as crypto and the miners.

On the chart, investors are likely to watch whether MARA holds above Monday’s low and whether it can reclaim the prior day’s highs. A move back above $10 — a common round-number level — would be a near-term confidence signal for momentum traders, while a break below the recent low would keep pressure on risk-sensitive names.

MARA’s investor relations calendar lists no upcoming events scheduled at this time, leaving crypto prices and broader risk sentiment as the dominant drivers into year-end trading.

Shan Ahmed Khan

Shan Ahmed Khan is a senior markets reporter at TS2.tech, specializing in stocks, technology and macroeconomic trends. A graduate of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), he previously worked in investment research and market analysis. His coverage helps readers understand the key developments influencing global financial markets and emerging industries.

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