Bitcoin mining stocks posted sharp gains in September, outpacing the cryptocurrency itself as investors rewarded firms pivoting to AI and HPC despite mounting profitability pressures.
Bitcoin mining stocks including Cipher Mining, Terawulf, Iris Energy, Hive Digital Technologies, and Bitfarms surged between 73% and 124% in September, outperforming Bitcoin, which slipped over 3%. The Miner Mag reported that Bitcoin’s hashrate surpassed one zetahash on a 14-day moving average, with a further 4.1% difficulty increase projected. Profitability remains weak, with hashprice stuck below $55 per petahash and fees under 0.8% of rewards. Miners are increasingly diversifying into GPU and AI ventures, such as Hive Digital’s data center push, Iris Energy’s Blackwell GPU deployment, and Terawulf’s partnership with Google. Many miners are also holding more mined Bitcoin, with Glassnode data showing three weeks of net inflows, peaking at 573 BTC on September 9, the largest daily accumulation since October 2023.