New York, January 6, 2026, 14:22 (EST) — Regular session
- IREN shares fall about 10% in afternoon trade, reversing part of Monday’s surge.
- Bitcoin slips more than 2%, dragging on U.S.-listed miners.
- Focus turns to CES headlines this week and IREN’s next earnings window in February.
IREN Limited (IREN) shares fell about 10% on Tuesday, retreating with other crypto-linked names as bitcoin turned lower. The Nasdaq-listed stock was down 10% at $43.43, after trading between $47.79 and $43.19 on volume of about 26.3 million shares.
The move matters now because IREN has become a high-beta proxy — meaning it often moves more than the broader market — for two themes that can swing fast: bitcoin prices and demand for power-hungry AI computing. When either narrative shifts, the stock tends to magnify the turn.
Tuesday’s drop followed a 13% jump in the prior session, as traders piled into miners during a broader bid for crypto-linked stocks. The quick reversal underscores how fragile positioning can be after a momentum burst. 1
Bitcoin was down about 2.3% at $92,123, after ending the previous session near $94,000. Miner peers Marathon Digital and CleanSpark fell 5.1% and 6.7%, respectively, mirroring the slide in the token that drives much of the sector’s revenue.
IREN runs renewable-powered data centers that it originally built for bitcoin mining and is now marketing for AI cloud services. The company says it operates sites in Canada and Texas. 2
Investors still anchor part of the longer-term story on its five-year, $9.7 billion AI cloud contract with Microsoft, which includes access to Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs — chips used to train and run AI models. Microsoft said the processors would roll out in phases through 2026 at IREN’s Childress, Texas campus. 3
The timing adds another catalyst: CES 2026 opened in Las Vegas on Tuesday and runs through Jan. 9, keeping the spotlight on AI hardware roadmaps and data-center capacity. Any shift in tone on AI spending can spill into names such as IREN, even as its mining business keeps it tethered to bitcoin. 4
Crypto traders also weighed fresh signs of Wall Street pushing deeper into digital assets. Morgan Stanley’s move to seek approval for spot crypto exchange-traded funds — ETFs that hold the tokens directly and trade like stocks — could draw more mainstream money into the market. “A bank entering the crypto ETF market adds legitimacy,” Morningstar ETF analyst Bryan Armour said. 5
But the same cross-currents cut both ways. If bitcoin keeps sliding or if IREN needs more financing for data-center buildouts, the stock can come under pressure, especially after sharp rallies; the company has recently used convertible notes — debt that can convert into shares — and share offerings as part of refinancing and repurchase plans. 6
