Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

According to RootData market data, in the past year, BTC has cumulatively fallen by 46.12%, but Bitcoin mining stocks have not experienced a simultaneous decline. Among them, HUT increased by 363.26%, WULF increased by 268.95%, IREN increased by 121.14%, RIOT increased by 59.90%, and CLSK increased by 12.41%.

This round of increase is not based on improvements in the mining fundamentals. June operational data shows that, despite the continuous decrease in mining difficulty, CleanSpark, BitFuFu, and Bitmain's output decreased month on month by 9% to 29%.

It is not difficult to see that the focus of the market chase has changed. Since July, CleanSpark signed an initial infrastructure lease agreement worth approximately $6.6 billion for 20 years, TeraWulf plans to raise $3.5 billion to expand its data center campus, and MARA acquired a Texas-based campus project company with planned power capacity of up to 2 GW for up to $600 million.

The stock prices of mining companies are no longer revolving solely around coin prices, output, and hash rates; the market has begun to value them according to a different logic.

The source of mining stock volatility is no longer on-chain

Earlier this month, the market experienced a typical misalignment where mining stocks once collectively retreated by about 20%, while BTC remained stable at around $64,000.

In terms of output, in June CleanSpark produced 614 BTC, down from 671 BTC in May, a month-on-month decline of 9%, with a nominal hash rate of 50 EH/s and an average operational hash rate of only 42.6 EH/s, widening the gap from 3.8 EH/s in May to 7.4 EH/s, indicating downtime or reduced load.

BitFuFu produced 125 BTC, a month-on-month decline of 29.4%, with total hash rate decreasing from 19.5 EH/s to 15.3 EH/s, mainly dragged down by third-party hosting hash rate shrinking from 16.3 EH/s to 11.8 EH/s.

Bitmain produced 64 BTC, a month-on-month decline of 29%, with the company attributing part of the reason to grid maintenance at the mining site.

This round of production reduction occurred after continuous reductions in difficulty. On June 14, the Bitcoin network difficulty decreased by 10.09%, marking the second-largest negative adjustment in 2026. On July 11, it fell again by 5% to 127.17 T, having cumulatively decreased by about 18% since the peak of approximately 155 T in November 2025.

A decrease in difficulty should have allowed miners remaining in the network to mine more coins per unit of hash rate, but output has continued to decline.

On the other hand, in the context of a sluggish market and pressured profitability, some miners are continuously exiting the network or shutting down equipment. Galaxy Research states that miners are entering a surrender period, marking the largest withdrawal since China's comprehensive crackdown on Bitcoin mining in 2021.

The reason for this clearing is also straightforward. According to CoinShares' Q1 2026 mining report, the average cash production cost for listed mining companies had risen to approximately $79,995 in Q4 2025, while JPMorgan estimates the current production cost to be around $78,000, whereas BTC's current price is near $64,000, with the price difference persisting for five months, and about 20% of miners are at a loss.

According to Hashrate Index data, the hashprice briefly dropped to a new post-halving low of $28 to $30 per PH/s around March 2026, and is currently about $32, still in the historically lowest region.

Reclassified under AI infrastructure valuation system

The new logic is not complicated; what AI data centers currently lack the most are connected power capacity, contiguous land, cooling, and building infrastructure, which mining companies happen to possess.

They have large-scale connectivity capabilities, sites suitable for transformation, ready operational systems, and are more familiar with the construction rhythm of high-load facilities.

PJM data shows that AI infrastructure projects put into operation in 2025 take an average of more than seven years, with about three years spent obtaining interconnection service agreements and about four years waiting for grid connection. An existing connected mining facility effectively skips these seven years, representing the value of mining companies.

Take CleanSpark for example; on July 14, the company announced the signing of a 20-year three-network lease agreement with an unnamed high-investment-grade technology company located in Georgia's Sandersville campus, with an initial contract income of approximately $6.6 billion, corresponding to a critical IT load of 175 megawatts, with delivery starting in Q4 2027. The market reacted robustly, with CLSK rising by 22% intraday.

Also in July, MARA spent up to $600 million to acquire a Texas-based campus project company with planned power capacity of up to 2 GW. However, this company holds a letter of intent signed with the power company. The time gap to electricity is precisely those seven years.

Additionally, the credit market is also pricing them according to new standards. According to Bloomberg, TeraWulf plans to raise $3.5 billion led by Morgan Stanley, including leveraged loans and high-yield bonds, to expand the Justified Data campus in Horseville, Kentucky. This is its first entry into the leveraged loan market. Lenders are also beginning to assess miners' balance sheets through the lens of infrastructure.

According to Guosheng Securities research report, as of early May 2026, the agreed key IT load for site hosting, bare metal, and cloud contracts signed within the sector totals approximately 3,201 megawatts, with a total contract amount exceeding $91.4 billion. The institution also found that the market capitalization of companies in the sector is significantly positively correlated with their AI power reserves and contracted AI power in North America.

CoinShares expects that by the end of 2026, up to 70% of the revenue of listed mining companies will come from AI and HPC, up from about 30% at the beginning of the year. TeraWulf has already made this shift; its HPC rental income of $21 million in Q1 exceeded that of its mining business, which was less than $13 million.

The cost of being revalued: Three layers of risk

The first layer of risk comes from valuation.

The revaluation of mining companies based on AI infrastructure also means that they have to endure the overall volatility of the AI narrative.

10x Research reports that Bitcoin mining stocks have largely decoupled from the price movements of the currency, and RIOT's stock price has shown increased synchronicity with the Philadelphia Semiconductor ETF since April 2026.

Bitcoin mining companies are currently deeply tied to the AI theme, which now revolves more around global supply chains and competition rather than crypto adoption or financial digitization. In addition, the performance of China's LLM concept stocks and the outlook for South Korea's semiconductor supply chain are directly influencing the trends of Bitcoin mining stocks.

After experiencing a significant rise, the risk appetite in these sectors is contracting. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 10.8% over ten trading days, and Reuters estimated that the entire industry evaporated about $1.3 trillion in market value, citing doubts about the return on investment in AI infrastructure, valuations at internet bubble levels, and a more hawkish Federal Reserve as roots of the problem.

The second layer of risk comes from return rates.

According to Bernstein’s report, the average return on assets over five years for Core Scientific in collaboration with CoreWeave reaches 75%, but the driving factor is the structure of capital expenditure rather than contractual terms, with tenants bearing $750 million of the total cost of $855 million through income prepayments. Riot achieves a return rate of 23% by transforming existing mining facilities.

However, these two are not industry benchmarks; the report notes that the baseline return rates in the industry actually fall to 5% for TeraWulf, 4% for Cipher, and 4% for CleanSpark.

Meta, as the largest buyer, claims to have surplus, while chip manufacturers say they want to build themselves, and mining companies are signing 15 to 20-year long contracts, not already realized income. That 20% retreat in mining stocks at the beginning of this month resulted from this context.

The third layer of risk comes from execution.

Mining companies are now pricing the future, rather than realized income. Taking CleanSpark as an example, the company just signed a long-term contract worth $6.6 billion, but its income currently still comes entirely from Bitcoin mining, and its AI business has not yet generated substantial revenue, with initial deliveries expected in Q4 2027.

Valuation has already stepped ahead, but realization must pass through three major hurdles:

The first hurdle is financing capability. According to CleanSpark’s filed 8-K, the construction cost for the campus is $10 million to $12 million per megawatt, corresponding to a capital expenditure of $1.75 billion to $2.1 billion for 175 megawatts. This amount has not yet been raised. The document also states that failure to meet any of the financing, construction, or delivery milestones will trigger rent reductions or even termination of the lease.

The second hurdle is regulatory licensing.

The third hurdle is tenant quality. Bernstein points out that tenant quality directly affects the valuation levels of mining companies, where extremely large cloud providers can bring more stable cash flow and lower financing costs, while small GPU cloud service providers correspond to higher operational risks and capital costs.

Miners' selling logic decouples from coin prices

The valuation logic has changed, and miners' behaviors have followed suit. However, the more immediate impact of this change on the crypto circle is reflected in how miners sell coins.

According to industry reports, in Q1 2026, listed mining companies sold a total of about 32,000 BTC, surpassing the total sales for all of 2025. Among them, Riot produced 1,473 BTC in the first quarter and sold 3,778 BTC during the same period, more than double its output, reducing its holdings to 15,680 BTC, an 18% year-on-year decrease.

In the past, miners sold coins primarily based on mining cash flow logic, selling coins to pay electricity bills, repay loans, and maintain daily operations, reluctant to sell at low prices and waiting for a rebound. Now, there is an additional layer of transformation financing logic, with coin sales also needing to create space for site repairs, land acquisition, capex supplementation, and longer-term AI construction plans.

As a result, even if coin prices do not experience extreme volatility, miners may continue to sell coins.

The same logic also determines whether leaving hash power will return.

In the past, the market generally assumed that hash power exiting the network would return after coin prices rebounded and difficulties decreased. After China's comprehensive crackdown on mining in 2021, the difficulty dropped by 46%, recovering within six months. However, what leaves now may not just be mining machines, but also the underlying power and capital expenditures.

Currently, mainstream AI contracts are often long-term agreements of over ten years. Once mining companies lock their sites, power, and financing structures into such contracts, resources will be far less flexible to flow back into BTC mining as before.

Thus, mining companies are moving further away from crypto; more accurately, the capital market has begun to value them based on what they look like after stepping away from the pure mining framework.

They will still influence the Bitcoin network and continue to derive income from mining, but the pursuit of power, land, and long-term leases is transforming them into a different type of company.