Crypto stocks rally as AI infrastructure names come under pressure
Crypto-linked shares rose Monday as investors rotated away from AI infrastructure, while bitcoin miners fell on funding concerns.
By Sarah Jenkins · Chief Macro Economics Correspondent
· 3 min read
Crypto stocks rally moves stood out Monday as the broader market fell, with investors shifting capital away from chipmakers and AI infrastructure companies and into alternative themes. The divergence was sharp inside digital assets: crypto exchanges, treasury companies and stablecoin-linked names advanced, while bitcoin miners sold off.
Bitmine Immersion led the group with an 11% gain after the ether accumulator said in a Monday update that it had increased its holdings by nearly 10,000 ether, worth about $19.4 million at current prices. Sharplink Gaming, another company tied to an ether treasury strategy, rose 6%.
Strategy, the best-known public bitcoin treasury company, gained 7% after adding to its cash reserve for a fifth consecutive week instead of buying more bitcoin. Coinbase Global, BitGo and Figure Technology each rose between 4% and 6%.
Circle Internet Group advanced 2% after announcing that it had acquired IBM’s portfolio of more than 1,000 blockchain-related patents worldwide. Circle did not disclose financial terms for the acquisition.
Why did crypto stocks rally while bitcoin miners fell?
The rally came as chip and AI infrastructure shares faced pressure from concerns about circular financing and rising competition from Chinese semiconductor companies, according to Owen Lau, an analyst at ClearStreet. Lau said the repricing of AI-related risk accelerated a rotation into other themes, including crypto.
Bitcoin miners did not share in the move because many of the publicly traded companies have become tied to the AI infrastructure trade. Investors increasingly value miners for power access, data center sites and energy contracts, not only for their bitcoin production, so weakness in AI-exposed infrastructure can spill into the mining group.
Michael Donovan, senior research analyst at Compass Point, told CNBC that Monday’s weakness partly reflected concerns about capital expenditure needs and whether companies across the miner-to-AI group may have to raise additional capital at higher costs to fund development plans.
Nvidia’s reported talks to provide financial support for OpenAI’s plan to lease a new AI data center in Ohio highlighted the growing use of credit in AI investment, Donovan said. That issue has sharpened scrutiny of how developers will finance large computing projects.
Which bitcoin mining stocks declined?
Cipher Mining fell 8%, the largest decline among the miners cited. Hut 8 dropped 6%, while Terawulf lost 4%.
The selling also hit companies described as more directly tied to bitcoin mining. Riot Platforms fell 5%, Mara Holdings declined 3% and CleanSpark was down 4%. Core Scientific, which has largely shifted away from bitcoin mining, dropped 9%.
Donovan told CNBC that some investors are asking whether credit demand for these projects is nearing its limits and which developers can fund their pipelines without significant dilution, costly debt or more backing from customers and strategic partners. He said that concern may weigh on the group in the near term, while adding that Compass Point still views base compute infrastructure for AI as attractive and structurally supply constrained.
The underlying tokens moved less than many of the related equities. Bitcoin was little changed and traded below $65,000. Ether was up more than 1% at about $1,900.
The split underscored how public crypto equities have become a mixed set of businesses. Treasury companies are often judged by the size and composition of their token holdings, exchanges and service providers by activity in digital-asset markets, and miners by both crypto economics and demand for power-intensive computing infrastructure.
This story draws on original reporting from CNBC.
