Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee recently ranked 17 large-cap crypto stocks by analyzing their 90-day price correlations against BlackRock’s cryptocurrency funds, utilizing numbers supplied by Fundstrat and Factset. The rankings highlight a distinct divergence in how different sectors of crypto-linked equities track underlying digital assets.
While treasury-focused firms closely shadow crypto assets—with MicroStrategy leading Bitcoin correlation at 78% and BitMine Immersion Technologies leading Ethereum correlation at 80%—Bitcoin miners display a surprisingly weak relationship with Bitcoin's price movements.
According to the 90-day trailing figures, Core Scientific tracked Bitcoin at just 16%, followed by Cipher Mining at 17%, TeraWulf at 18%, and Hut 8 at 19%. Riot Platforms reached 31% and IREN hit 33%. Notably, all of these miners trailed Trump Media, which scored 40% despite having no mining operations.
The Shift Toward Artificial Intelligence
The low correlation stems from a fundamental business pivot. As mining margins narrowed due to rising costs, many crypto miners repurposed their infrastructure to lease computing power to artificial intelligence companies. These firms already possessed the two resources most sought after by AI operators: cheap power contracts and warehouses equipped to handle heavy energy loads.
Financial results from several miners underscore this transition:
- Core Scientific: For the quarter ending in June, the company booked $164.2 million in total revenue, with $136.7 million coming from its colocation data center business and $21.5 million from self-mining, meaning AI work supplied 83% of its revenue.
- TeraWulf: In May, the company earned $21.0 million leasing high-performance computing capacity compared to $13.0 million from mining, translating to 62% from AI.
- IREN: For its quarter ending in March, the company generated $33.6 million from AI cloud services alongside $111.2 million from mining, with AI accounting for 23% of the total.
Comparing these figures reveals a clear pattern: the more revenue a miner derives from AI operations, the less its shares track Bitcoin. TeraWulf Chief Financial Officer Patrick Fleury noted that the business expects to see increasingly contracted, recurring revenue, thereby reducing its exposure to historical bitcoin mining volatility.
Implications for Investors
Historically, the shift has deep roots. Core Scientific previously filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2022 following a Bitcoin crash and heavy debt before emerging in January 2024, leaving it the least exposed miner to Bitcoin today.
For equity investors, the data indicates that purchasing a miner for direct Bitcoin exposure now essentially means investing in a power and computing landlord whose fortunes rely on AI demand. While this pivot has allowed some miners to climb even while Bitcoin fell, the transition has also carried costs, with firms like MARA and CleanSpark posting $851 million in combined losses during the shift.
Meanwhile, treasury companies track Bitcoin more tightly, though that has not automatically translated to outperformance. MicroStrategy traded near $118.86 on Friday against a 52-week high of $365.21, demonstrating that correlation reflects direction rather than guaranteed profit.
