Against the backdrop of Bitcoin’s price declining by more than 46% over the past year, the cryptocurrency market is generally shrouded in pessimism. However, a significant divergence has emerged in the capital markets: RootData data shows that the stock prices of certain listed mining companies have surged against the trend, with gains for firms such as HUT (HUT), WULF, IREN (IREN), RIOT, and CLSK ranging from 12.41% to 363.26%. This anomalous phenomenon reveals that market valuation logic has completely decoupled from on-chain output and has instead anchored onto the scarce resource attributes of AI infrastructure controlled by these enterprises.
Fundamental data has emitted contradictory signals. June operating data shows that despite continued downward adjustments to Bitcoin network difficulty, CleanSpark, BitFuFu (FUFU), and Canaan Inc. (CAN) still recorded output declines ranging from 9% to 29%. Among them, CleanSpark mined 614 bitcoins in June, down 9% from May, with the gap between nominal hashrate and actual operational hashrate widening to 7.4 EH/s; BitFuFu’s output fell 29.4% month-over-month, primarily due to a contraction in third-party hosted hashrate; and Canaan Inc.’s output dropped 29% due to power grid maintenance. Notably, although two difficulty adjustments in June and July cumulatively reduced difficulty by 15%, which should theoretically boost output, Galaxy Research pointed out that this instead triggered the largest wave of miner exits since China’s 2021 crackdown. The core issue lies in severe cost inversion: the average cash cost for listed mining companies in the fourth quarter of 2025 rose to approximately $80,000, while the current Bitcoin price is only $64,000, meaning the industry has been in a loss-making state for five consecutive months, with hash prices still at historical lows.
The core of the valuation restructuring lies in the ready-made power and site resources that mining companies possess, which provide them with a seven-year time advantage in entering the AI infrastructure space. PJM data shows that new AI projects require an average of seven years to resolve grid interconnection and connection issues, while mining companies can skip this cycle entirely. CleanSpark signed a 20-year lease agreement worth $6.6 billion on July 14, corresponding to 175 megawatts of IT load; boosted by this news, the stock surged 22% that day. MARA (MARA) also spent $600 million to acquire a project company, with planned capacity reaching 2 gigawatts. The credit market has subsequently shifted direction, with TeraWulf (WULF) planning to raise $3.5 billion under the lead of Morgan Stanley for data center expansion. Data shows that as of early May 2026, the industry’s contracted capacity corresponds to IT load value exceeding $91.4 billion, with market capitalization positively correlated with North American AI power reserves. CoinShares predicts that by the end of 2026, 70% of listed mining companies’ revenue will come from AI and HPC businesses, with TeraWulf having already pioneered this structural transformation.
The shift in valuation logic has profoundly affected miners’ selling behavior. In the first quarter of 2026, listed mining companies sold approximately 32,000 BTC, exceeding the total for all of 2025. RIOT sold more than twice its production in that quarter, with holdings down 18% year-over-year. Selling now serves not only to meet cash flow needs but also to raise funds for capital expenditures on mine maintenance, land acquisitions, and AI construction. The logic of hashrate return has also undergone a fundamental change; what is now exiting is not just equipment, but also the power and capital that have already been locked up by long-term AI lease contracts. Mining companies are gradually breaking away from the pure cryptocurrency industry, and the capital market has already priced in this fact—they are still mining, but are evolving into new-type infrastructure enterprises pursuing power, land, and long-term leasehold rights.
