New York, Feb 18, 2026, 08:42 (EST) — Premarket
- MARA slipped 5.2% in the previous session, then barely budged in premarket trading.
- Two executives put in Rule 144 filings to unload small batches of shares.
- Traders are picking through a JPMorgan note on mining scale, with bitcoin drifting down.
Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings, Inc (NASDAQ:MARA) traded near $7.51 ahead of the bell Wednesday, following a 5.18% drop at Tuesday’s close. (Zacks)
Paperwork, not a quarterly report, set things in motion. Late Tuesday, two MARA execs signaled possible share sales through regulatory filings. For a stock so tightly linked to bitcoin’s mood swings, insider moves like this tend to get noticed—especially when the price action’s already unsteady.
MARA logged a pair of Form 144 filings dated Feb. 17, the company’s filing list indicates. (MARA)
Frederick Thiel is looking to offload 27,505 shares via Fidelity Brokerage Services on Nasdaq, according to a recent filing, pegging the total at roughly $210,688. The document also flagged three earlier sales matching that share count over the last three months, noting the trading plan was adopted on May 28, 2025. (MARA)
Another Form 144 detailed plans from Salman Hassan Khan to offload 16,000 shares through Fidelity, pegged at roughly $122,560 in total market value. The document notes a trading plan adoption date of Sept. 11, 2025. It also references previous sales from a family trust during November and December. (MARA)
Form 144 is just a notification related to Rule 144 resales of restricted or control securities—not confirmation of an actual sale. In MARA’s case, both notices represented a tiny fraction of the company’s nearly 378 million shares outstanding. Still, they arrive as investors seem especially sensitive to insider moves of any kind.
Bitcoin slipped roughly 0.9% as of early Wednesday. Shares of U.S.-listed miners were also feeling the heat—Riot Platforms dropped around 3.6%, while CleanSpark saw a sharper slide, down about 5.7% according to the latest quotes.
JPMorgan analysts headed by Reginald Smith noted in a report that Bitdeer has pushed past MARA in terms of self-mining hash rate—essentially, the computing muscle behind bitcoin mining. Bitdeer clocked in at 63.2 exahashes per second, compared to MARA’s most recent 60.4 EH/s. The analysts described it as an “impressive” month for Bitdeer. (Decrypt)
MARA calls itself a digital asset compute company focused mainly on bitcoin mining, but it also sells data-center infrastructure and technology, per a Reuters company profile. (Reuters)
MARA traded between $7.33 and $7.88 in its most recent regular session, ultimately closing out at $7.51, Market Chameleon data show. (Market Chameleon)
The filings go both directions here: some investors shrug them off as nothing more than standard plan-mandated sales, while others view them as another drag in a sector already buffeted by revenue that tracks bitcoin’s ups and downs and fluctuating mining expenses. If the coin softens, or power prices spike, or liquidity gets squeezed, miners feel it right away.
Miners are zeroed in on the upcoming network difficulty reset for bitcoin—a technical move that shifts the challenge of finding new blocks and can squeeze or boost margins regardless of price action. CoinWarz puts the next adjustment for Feb. 19, 20:37 UTC, and they’re looking for difficulty to jump roughly 13.9%. (Coinwarz)
