New York, Feb 10, 2026, 08:04 EST — Premarket
Shares of bitcoin miner MARA Holdings (MARA) fell 2.3% to $8.06 in premarket trading on Tuesday after Morgan Stanley began coverage with an underweight rating and an $8 price target. Underweight is the bank’s term for expecting a stock to lag peers in its coverage group. 1
The call matters because investors have been trying to sort which miners can turn power and data centers into steadier revenue, and which remain mostly a bet on bitcoin’s next swing. That split has started to show up in daily moves, even before companies post new operating numbers.
Morgan Stanley’s coverage, led by analyst Stephen Byrd, said valuations for “bitcoin-to-data center” plays look “increasingly attractive,” while he started MARA at underweight. Bitcoin climbed back toward $70,000 on Monday as Washington advanced a crypto market-structure bill, briefly lifting risk appetite across parts of the sector. 2
For MARA, Morgan Stanley pointed to what it described as a “hybrid” approach — keeping sizable exposure to bitcoin price upside rather than leaning into leasing data centers to hyperscalers, the giant cloud companies. The bank also said bitcoin mining economics remain the dominant driver of MARA’s stock value. 3
TeraWulf jumped 16.5% and Cipher Mining rose 13.7% in early trading, widening the gap between miners that investors have been treating as data-center conversion candidates and the rest of the group.
Bitcoin was down 0.8% at about $68,476, trimming part of the prior rebound and keeping miners’ revenue outlook tied to the token’s day-to-day direction.
Riot Platforms, another U.S.-listed bitcoin miner, was up 3.6% in early trading, underscoring how quickly sentiment can rotate within the group on research notes and bitcoin tape.
Still, the data-center pivot is not a quick fix. Deals take time, power costs can jump, and any renewed slide in bitcoin — or a rise in network difficulty, which makes mining harder — can squeeze margins faster than companies can cut costs.
With no fresh company update, traders are left to handicap two moving targets: bitcoin’s next leg and whether Wall Street stays willing to pay up for miners’ power assets as quasi-infrastructure plays.
MARA’s investor-relations calendar currently lists no upcoming events, leaving the timing of its next quarterly update unclear on the company’s own site. 4
Market attention now shifts to that report, which the company has not confirmed but is estimated by MarketBeat to land on Feb. 25, and to any follow-through as other research desks revisit the sector. 5
