Bitcoin Rebound Fails to Save Squeezed Mining Stocks

Shares of Cipher Digital (CIFR), MARA Holdings (MARA), and TeraWulf (WULF) plummeted in morning trade on Friday after receiving price target cuts from Wall Street. Despite Bitcoin (BTC) reclaiming the $65,000 level, these companies' stocks fell by significant margins.

MARA stock dropped over 5%, while CIFR stock declined by as much as 4.5% and WULF stock fell 3.7%. Analyst sentiment around MARA and WULF remained bearish, but CIFR saw a shift to 'extremely bullish' from 'bullish' territory.

The price target cuts were issued by Cantor Fitzgerald, Citizens, and JPMorgan, citing second-quarter losses for each company. MARA Holdings reported a $611 million net loss due to a decline in its 35,577 BTC treasury value, while Cipher Digital's net loss was $267.5 million, largely driven by a non-cash charge.

TeraWulf's loss was the largest at $940.8 million, primarily due to a $755.7 million non-cash hit from marking Google's warrants to market. The mining economics of these companies remain squeezed, with Bitcoin network difficulty near record levels and hash-price compressed in the high-$20s to low-$30s per petahash per second per day.