The cryptocurrency market has been on a rollercoaster, especially in the last couple of months, with Bitcoin rallying 128% year-on-year as of Christmas Day.
However, despite the bullish trends, the impressive performance hasn’t translated into gains for publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies, with many of their stocks showing significant declines.
Mining Stocks Falter Despite Market Gains
Data from the Hashrate Index shows that several major players in the sector are experiencing downturns. The biggest losses were recorded by Argo Blockchain. The stock of the UK-based BTC miner with a 1,500 PH/s hashrate has plunged 84.31% year-to-date (YTD), accompanied by a 5% dip over 24 hours.
Greenidge, which operates two main data centers in Dresden, New York, and Spartanburg, South Carolina, also suffered major losses, going down nearly 9% in the last day and more than 74% YTD.
Other poorly performing stocks included Sphere 3D, whose market cap fell to $23 million after share prices dipped by 4.22% overnight and 71.32% since the year began.
Mawson Infrastructure Group and Ebang International also registered 70% and 53% drops in their YTD values, respectively, with the same scenario replicated in their 24-hour performances, where both fell more than 4%.
Bigger capped firms such as Riot Platforms, with a recorded hashrate of 29,400 PH/s, also posted notable losses, sliding almost 8% in the last day and 29.92% YTD. On its part, Marathon Digital reported a 3.56% reduction over 24 hours and a more significant 16.05% from the year’s start.
Outliers Reaping From Bitcoin’s Surge
On the brighter side, companies like TeraWulf bucked the trend, posting a YTD surge of 152.61%, pushing its stock price to $5.81. Interestingly, it suffered the worst one-day dip of all BTC-miner stocks, shedding more than 12% from its price in that period.
Similarly, Bitdeer gained 131% across 12 months, boosted by a slight 0.15% increase in the last 24 hours to breach the $20 mark. Other stocks that showcased resilience included Hut 8 Mining and Northern Data, with a combined hashrate of 8,400 PH/s, whose prices have jumped 71.83% and 65.73% in that order.
This divergence between BTC’s bullish run and the mining sector’s struggles highlights the complexity of virtual asset investment. It continues to dominate the crypto market, with a 5% increase since December 24, to push its price to just below $99,000. However, the world’s largest virtual asset by market cap is down 5.6% across seven days, balanced by the 128% it has gained since January.
Elsewhere, statistics recently shared by CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju revealed that institutional holders of the OG crypto have spiked to 31% from only 14% in 2023. The uptick has been driven by the growing popularity of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), government acquisitions, and the effect of MicroStrategy’s BTC-buying spree.
