New York, Feb 23, 2026, 05:54 EST — Premarket
- IREN slipped in early premarket moves, extending Friday’s steep drop.
- Bitcoin slipped, with traders digesting renewed uncertainty around U.S. tariffs and another shaky session for risk assets.
- Traders eye Nvidia’s earnings set for Wednesday, while IREN’s MSCI USA Index addition lands Friday.
IREN Ltd (IREN.O) slipped 0.9% to $39.60 ahead of Monday’s open. On Friday, the stock dropped 7.7%, moving between $39.53 and $44.32, with some 41.3 million shares changing hands. (Public)
IREN’s proving to be a quick proxy for two jittery corners of the market: crypto and the AI-powered data center trade. Investors have revived “sell America” bets, spooked by revived tariff anxieties after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision and fresh steps from President Donald Trump. That’s been enough to send S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures sliding. “The tariff landscape is now more uncertain than before, uncertainty is not good news for any economy or market,” said Rodrigo Catril, senior FX strategist at NAB. (Reuters)
Bitcoin slipped 2.7% to roughly $66,283, after an earlier dip to $64,388. That retreat soured the mood around U.S.-listed miners and crypto-adjacent stocks before the cash session began.
Premarket trading saw more miners lose ground. Riot Platforms dropped 3.4%. CleanSpark gave up 1.7%. Marathon Digital barely budged.
Australia’s IREN operates renewable-powered data centers geared toward bitcoin mining and something it brands as AI cloud services—basically, renting out computing power for artificial intelligence tasks. LSEG data on Reuters puts its AI cloud offering at about 1,896 Nvidia H100 and H200 GPUs, or graphics processing units, available for customer workloads. (Reuters)
That links the stock with another major catalyst this week: Nvidia’s earnings. The company plans to host its call Wednesday, Feb. 25, at 5 p.m. ET—a release known for moving not just chipmakers but plenty of names across the AI landscape. (NVIDIA Newsroom)
Another factor is on the schedule. IREN announced on Feb. 12 it’s set to join the MSCI USA Index after markets close on Feb. 27—a move likely to prompt benchmark-tracking funds to buy. “Being added reflects the scale and liquidity we have built in the business,” Co-CEO Daniel Roberts said. (GlobeNewswire)
Still, there’s a flip side. Premarket moves often vanish once the main session fills in liquidity, and the stock might lurch on any sharp shift in bitcoin, tariffs, or tech sentiment. Should crypto falter, miners could see their cash flow pressured in a hurry.
