NEW YORK, Jan 4, 2026, 10:19 ET — Market closed
- TeraWulf shares ended Friday sharply higher, tracking broad gains in U.S.-listed bitcoin miners.
- New insider filings disclosed large equity awards for several top executives.
- Focus turns to bitcoin’s weekend move and key U.S. data due in the week ahead.
Shares of TeraWulf Inc (WULF) rose 10.8% on Friday to $12.74, a strong start to 2026 for the Nasdaq-listed bitcoin miner. The stock traded between $11.57 and $12.79 in the session.
The move underscored renewed demand for high-beta crypto equities at the start of the year. Bitcoin was last up about 1.4% at $91,253, leaving miners’ stock gains well ahead of the token’s latest move.
Investors also had fresh insider reports to parse. A batch of Form 4 filings posted late Friday showed new equity awards for several senior executives. 1
The rally was sector-wide. Marathon Digital rose 9.7% on Friday, Riot Platforms climbed 14%, CleanSpark gained 10%, and Cipher Mining added 11.2%.
Mining stocks often behave like leveraged bets on bitcoin because revenue is tied to the value of the coins produced, while major costs such as power and equipment are largely fixed. That operating leverage can magnify moves in either direction.
Chief Executive Officer Paul Prager reported receiving about 7.85 million restricted stock units and 3.92 million performance-based units, a filing showed. Restricted stock units, or RSUs, are stock awards that can turn into shares if vesting conditions are met.
Chief Technology Officer Nazar Khan disclosed awards tied to 6.54 million RSUs and 3.27 million performance units, while Chief Financial Officer Patrick Fleury and Chief Strategy Officer Kerri Langlais each reported awards covering 2.62 million RSUs and 1.31 million performance units. The filings said one-third of the time-based awards vest on each of the first three anniversaries of Jan. 2, 2026, while performance awards vest only if specified goals are met by the third anniversary.
Two directors, Lisa A. Prager and Walter E. Carter, reported receiving 2,176 and 2,720 shares respectively in lieu of cash retainers. The forms priced the share awards at $11.49, the Dec. 31 closing price. 2
The equity awards land as TeraWulf pushes deeper into data-center hosting alongside bitcoin mining. In December, the company and Fluidstack said they priced project-level financing for a 168-megawatt high-performance computing joint venture at an Abernathy, Texas campus. “This financing represents another important step in scaling a platform that was designed from the outset to grow,” Prager said at the time, and a separate SEC filing said a joint venture subsidiary completed a $1.3 billion 7.25% senior secured notes offering due 2030 to help fund construction of the site. 3
But the trade remains tethered to bitcoin. A pullback in the token, higher “network difficulty” — the measure of how hard it is to win new coins — or a jump in power costs can tighten miners’ cash flow and raise the odds of shareholder dilution if companies need fresh capital.
With U.S. markets shut on Sunday, traders will look to Monday’s session for follow-through in crypto-linked names and for macro catalysts that can move risk assets. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to publish the December employment report on Jan. 9, and Reuters has flagged the Jan. 13 U.S. consumer price index and the start of the fourth-quarter earnings season as key events for the week ahead. 4
