Sixteen of the 20 bitcoin mining and digital-infrastructure stocks tracked by TheEnergyMag finished higher on Thursday, the same day the Nasdaq Composite shed roughly 2%. That kind of split used to be nearly impossible: mining stocks have historically acted as high-beta proxies for both bitcoin and the broader tech sector, amplifying whatever direction the market moved. Thursday broke that pattern.
The catalyst was a pair of deals that reframed what mining companies actually are. Hut 8 signed a second 15-year lease at its Beacon Point campus in Texas, worth $9.8 billion for 352 megawatts of IT capacity. Combined with an earlier agreement, total contracted capacity now stands at 704 megawatts and the cumulative base contract value hits $19.6 billion. On the same day, IREN announced $2.8 billion in new multiyear cloud-services contracts with AI developers, pushing its year-end AI-cloud revenue target past $4 billion, up from a prior $3.7 billion forecast. Hut 8 gained 5.3% on the day, Cipher Mining climbed 4.7%, Riot Platforms added 3.7%, American Bitcoin rose 3.3%, and TeraWulf was up 3.1%.
What dragged the Nasdaq down while miners held firm
The sell pressure came from multiple directions at once. Alphabet fell after investors zeroed in on its accelerating AI capital expenditure plans despite solid cloud growth. Tesla missed profit expectations. Oil prices pushed toward $100 a barrel, stoking inflation fears and sending Treasury yields higher. The Nasdaq was down 1.6% shortly after Thursday's open and extended that loss to about 2% by midday. None of it pulled the miners with it, which is notable given that a $100 oil shock carries real consequences for inflation numbers and typically hammers risk assets broadly.
How investors are repricing these assets
Morgan Stanley put a number on the shift. The bank sees mining sites with existing grid connections evolving into large-scale AI data center complexes and projects the sector could eventually trade near $15 of enterprise value per watt. Current valuations sit at roughly $2 to $4 per watt. That gap is the entire thesis. Miners own something AI hyperscalers desperately need and can't easily replicate: permitted land, existing grid access, and power infrastructure that took years to build. Signing a 15-year, nearly $10 billion lease is not a pivot announcement, it is a binding infrastructure commitment that changes the revenue profile of the company for a generation.
The correlation breakdown on Thursday may be partial and temporary, or it may mark the start of a longer re-rating. What's clear is that investors are no longer pricing these stocks purely as leveraged bets on bitcoin. The crypto market's own dynamics still matter, but the AI data center angle is now pulling weight of its own.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
