Bitcoin mining stocks experienced a 20% decline as investor enthusiasm for AI and semiconductors cooled, according to a July 7 research note from 10x Research. However, the sector showed signs of recovery on July 8, with TeraWulf (WULF), IREN, and Hut 8 (HUT) all rallying despite Bitcoin's price remaining unchanged. As reported by 10x Research, mining equities have largely decoupled from Bitcoin after a sharp rally and an equally steep reversal, with Riot Platforms (RIOT) moving in step with the semiconductor SOX ETF since April 2026. The research note argues that miners now trade as AI infrastructure companies rather than pure Bitcoin proxies, with their share prices responding to chip supply chains and data-center compute demand instead of crypto-market signals. Compass Point analysts Michael Donovan and Ed Engel now argue that markets are giving little credit to future AI data center pipelines despite billions of dollars in signed leases, with several companies trading below the value of their contracted business.
The correction comes after public miners offloaded a record 32,000 BTC in the first quarter, exceeding their full-year 2025 sales and surpassing the roughly 20,000 BTC dumped during the Terra-Luna collapse in 2022. Riot alone sold 3,778 BTC for $289.5 million in that period, converting mined and held coin into capital as it retooled its business toward compute services. The company's treasury shrank 18% year over year to 15,680 BTC, with the company continuing to sell Bitcoin to fund data center construction, including a 500 BTC transfer to NYDIG in late June. However, analysts note that the heaviest miner selling landed months ago and found buyers, with Strategy alone purchasing 44,377 BTC in March, or 94% of all public-company acquisitions that month. The scale of the selling funded the pivot toward AI and high-performance computing, leaving the sector more exposed to chip-cycle swings than at any prior point.
TeraWulf stock rose more than 12.8% after signing a 20-year lease with Anthropic for a Kentucky data center that will support 401 megawatts of critical IT load, online by early 2028. Analysts project roughly $19 billion in revenue over the lease's term, with Compass Point raising its price target to $40 from $28 after the deal and keeping its buy rating. CEO Paul Prager said the lease confirms the company's AI infrastructure pivot and locks in a long-term revenue stream. IREN climbed 8.01% after Freedom Capital Markets upgraded the stock to buy, arguing the recent pullback had created more upside than the market recognized. Hut 8 jumped 9.69% in a single session after joining several Russell growth and small-cap indexes, with the stock up 383% over the past year. The pattern demonstrates that miner valuations now track AI leasing headlines more closely than bitcoin mining stocks ever tracked Bitcoin's price.
Compass Point analysts Michael Donovan and Ed Engel developed a framework that separates the value of long-term AI leases already under contract from projects that have yet to secure customers. Using this approach, the firm said Applied Digital (APLD), TeraWulf (WULF) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) appear to offer the largest disconnect between their contracted business and current valuations. In each case, Compass Point argues the market is assigning little, if any, value to additional AI capacity that has yet to be leased, despite the potential for those projects to generate significant rental income once completed. Core Scientific (CORZ) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) stand out for different reasons, with Core Scientific's existing contracts already largely reflected in its valuation, meaning further upside will likely depend on signing new customers. Riot, meanwhile, is valued more on future potential than current lease income, with investors placing a premium on its Corsicana campus and broader AI development pipeline despite its relatively limited contracted capacity today.
Despite the mining stock decline, Bitcoin has proven comparatively resilient, trading near $63,042 as of this writing and recovering from an early July dip while holding above support at $58,115. Riot dropped 7.5% on Tuesday to $21.16, down roughly 26% from its late June peak, while MARA slid 6% to $12.17. According to 10x Research, this insulation follows from the decoupling itself, with miner share prices now resting on expected AI and data center revenue rather than Bitcoin's supply and demand dynamics. The behavioral evidence sits in the price data, with Riot moving in step with the semiconductor SOX ETF since April 2026, showing the clearest signal yet that Chinese large-language-model stocks and the Korean semiconductor supply chain now directly influence how the market values Bitcoin miners. The firm's data shows that cooling chip sentiment therefore compresses equity valuations without affecting Bitcoin's supply and demand dynamics.
