Bitcoin mining stocks faced a sea of red Monday as a sharp decline in cryptocurrency prices collided with analyst skepticism regarding the sector’s expensive transition to AI.
Stock prices have dropped alongside bitcoin’s 10% correction over the last week despite a flurry of announcements regarding data center expansions.
HIVE dropped 8.2% to $2.56 on Monday’s open. The miner recently announced plans to grow its Paraguay operations by 100 megawatts in 2026 and launched a new high-performance computing business line. Bitdeer opened down slightly, falling 0.84%; the company launched NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 GPU clusters in Malaysia to support AI cloud services in January. Bitfarms fell 1.7% to start the week.
Investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) downgraded HIVE Digital (NASDAQ: HIVE) Bitfarms (NASDAQ: BITF), and Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) last week citing “execution risks” in their AI strategies. Analyst Stephen Glagola warned the transition to AI/HPC is more capital-intensive with a longer return horizon than the market anticipates.
Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) slid 1.75% at open to $15.20, before rebounding to $15.47 by publication time. Riot recently signed a 10-year, 25-megawatt leasing agreement with AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) valued at $311 million. Riot pivoted to AI infrastructure by acquiring full ownership of its Rockdale, Texas facility to host AMD’s computers, and the company indicated the total lease value could reach $1 billion if AMD signs additional options.
CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) declined 4.18% to $11.34. In January, the company announced its purchasing 447 acres in Brazoria County, Texas for a 600-megawatt campus. J.P. Morgan noted “management believes the proximity of recent acquisitions to large cities makes the infrastructure suitable for AI/HPC inference applications.”
Galaxy (NASDAQ: GLXY) fell 4.1% to $27.10. The firm is expanding its Helios data center in Texas to 1.6 gigawatts after ERCOT approval for the expansion. CEO Mike Novogratz stated the company “will be in negotiation and conversation with” hyperscale computing tenants for the 830-megawatt add on.
MARA opened down 1.58% to $9.35. The company recently received approval from the French Treasury for its controlling stake in Exaion, the data center subsidiary of France’s national power operator.
Header image by Behnam Norouzi via Unsplash
