NEW YORK, March 17, 2026, 12:32 EDT
MARA Holdings slipped Tuesday, dipping about 0.3% to $9.21 by midday in New York. The move followed a Form 144 filing revealing The S&N Khan Family Trust—linked to CFO Salman Hassan—intends to offload 16,000 shares worth $146,880. Bitcoin, meanwhile, stayed north of $74,000. MARA
The sale barely makes a dent in MARA’s 380.2 million shares on the market, but it lands just as investors are sizing up the company’s ongoing bitcoin exposure against management’s efforts to branch deeper into high-performance computing — the data-center business behind AI and other compute-heavy tasks. MARA
Citigroup slashed its 12-month bitcoin price forecast to $112,000 from $143,000 on Tuesday, flagging that U.S. crypto legislation has lost momentum. “Regulatory catalysts will drive further adoption and flows but the window of opportunity for U.S. legislation this year is narrowing,” Citi strategist Alex Saunders said in a note. Reuters
Bitcoin hovered near $74,235, gaining roughly 1.2%. Among listed miners, Riot Platforms ticked up 0.2%. CleanSpark slipped 1.3%. Core Scientific lost almost 3%. MARA lagged, trailing the token’s move for the day.
MARA’s been working to push that trade further. In late February, the company inked a deal with Starwood Capital’s digital infrastructure unit—aiming to convert and scale up select sites for enterprise, hyperscale, and AI customers. The initial goal: about 1 gigawatt of IT capacity, with plans to ramp that up beyond 2.5 gigawatts. “Power certainty into capacity certainty,” is how Chief Executive Fred Thiel described the agreement. MARA
The balance sheet remains front and center here. In its March 2 annual filing, MARA reported closing out 2025 with 53,822 bitcoin—20% higher than the prior year—as revenue climbed to $907.1 million from $656.4 million. But that same filing revealed a swing to a $1.31 billion net loss. MARA
MARA disclosed in the same filing that it tweaked its 2026 treasury policy, opening the door to selling bitcoin already on its balance sheet—not just the newly mined stuff. For management, that’s an extra liquidity lever. But it’s a notable pivot away from the previous playbook of holding bitcoin for the long term. MARA
The risk for shareholders stands out: should bitcoin pull back before the AI expansion delivers, MARA might get stuck with hefty crypto exposure and trickier growth plans. Citi flagged the chance of bitcoin dropping to $58,000 if there’s a recession, while MARA itself cautioned that the Starwood partnership might fall short. As of Dec. 31, the company still had roughly $1.5 billion available through its at-the-market stock sale program—potentially setting up more dilution if it decides to raise cash. Reuters
The filing on Tuesday pointed to a planned sale linked with a Rule 10b5-1 plan put in place Sept. 11, 2025—a standard preset system for insiders to offload shares under certain terms. It’s not a huge disclosure, but it comes as MARA holders weigh bitcoin’s bounce, regulatory uncertainty, and the possible next phase for AI infrastructure. MARA
