NEW YORK, March 18, 2026, 19:16 EDT
Shares of MARA Holdings slipped Wednesday, closing near $8.92, with bitcoin sliding and other risk assets losing ground after the Federal Reserve kept rates unchanged and projected fewer cuts ahead. Riot Platforms fell 3.95%, CleanSpark dropped 2.18%—miners broadly weaker as Wall Street reacted to the Fed’s updated stance.
Here’s the thing: MARA remains tightly tethered to bitcoin’s ups and downs. As of the end of 2025, the company had 53,822 bitcoin on the books, valued at about $4.7 billion. A shift in the token price can swing investor perceptions of its balance sheet and earnings in a hurry.
That sensitivity now faces a regulatory shakeup. On Tuesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission clarified that federal securities laws apply strictly to “digital securities,” and hinted a crypto safe-harbor proposal might open for comments in the coming weeks. Still, Citigroup strategist Alex Saunders flagged that “the window of opportunity for U.S. legislation this year is narrowing,” despite the potential for those developments to trigger more adoption and ETF inflows. Reuters
Bitcoin slipped, down 3.9% to roughly $71,678 after the Fed’s move, Barron’s said—a drop that erased some of the gains miners saw earlier in the week.
Insider filings landed in the mix as well. Rule 144 paperwork flagged CEO Fred Thiel planning to offload as many as 27,505 shares, pegged at about $252,496. CFO Salman Hassan Khan lined up up to 16,000 shares, roughly $146,880. Both sales fall under prearranged 10b5-1 plans.
MARA’s push to diversify its business took a turn on Feb. 26, when it announced a partnership with Starwood that could add roughly 1 gigawatt of IT capacity in the near term—potentially ramping up to over 2.5 gigawatts, targeting hyperscale, enterprise, and AI customers. “MARA’s power rich sites give customers what they need most: predictable access to energy at scale,” Thiel said then. MARA
The core mining segment remains the tough spot. Last month, the company logged fourth-quarter revenue of $202.31 million—well short of the $250.74 million analysts were looking for—and ended up with a loss of $4.52 per share. For the full year 2025, MARA pulled in $907.1 million in revenue, but still recorded a hefty $1.31 billion net loss, according to Reuters/LSEG.
The downside sticks out. MARA disclosed in its annual report that roughly 28% of its bitcoin was either loaned out or put up as collateral at the end of the year. The company flagged the risk: a steep bitcoin selloff could lead to margin calls on its debt, and pricier electricity threatens both mining and AI inference margins.
The company argues that high-performance computing (HPC) could mean more predictable revenue than mining in the long run. But its own filing notes that AI-driven sales are still tied to factors like customer demand, pricing, and usage—territory mostly controlled by bigger players. The stock, for now, is still riding the same coin volatility it wants to leave behind.
