Bitcoin Mining Stocks Sink Friday Yet Still Beat BTC in 2026 Performance

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Publicly-listed bitcoin miners took a beating on Friday, May 15, 2026, with every major traded mining stock dropping between 2.52% and 9.59% in a single session, even as their year-to-date gains outpaced bitcoin’s own performance by a wide margin. Bitcoin Mining Stocks Sink Friday Yet Still Beat BTC in 2026 Performance Key Takeaways - All ten bitcoin mining stocks tracked fell on May 15, 2026, with Bitdeer dropping the most at 9.59%. - Every miner on the list outperformed bitcoin’s negative 11.1% YTD return, led by Hut 8 at 123.16%. - IREN Limited’s 12.37% five-day slide signals short-term pressure even as sector YTD gains hold firm. Bitcoin Miner Stocks Suffer on Friday, But Still Hold Solid 2026 Gains Bitcoin closed the week at $77,849, down 11.1% year-to-date. Yet all of the top ten miners today sit well above that figure, and the reasons why go beyond BTC price action. Hut 8 Corp. leads the YTD group (out of the top ten publicly-traded mining stocks by market cap) with a 123.16% gain, trading at $102.52 per share despite sliding 6.26% on Friday. Bitcoinminingstock.io data shows the company’s market cap stands at $11.54 billion. Hut 8 has been building out artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure under a $7 billion, 15-year lease at its River Bend site, offering GPU-as-a-Service and high-performance compute capacity to enterprise clients. Terawulf, Inc. follows with a 95.56% YTD gain after dropping 7.03% on the day. Its market cap is $9.17 billion. Terawulf has contracted roughly $12.8 billion in HPC revenue, with deals tied to Google and Fluidstack-backed partners covering more than 200 megawatts of capacity. Applied Digital Corporation posted a 72.38% YTD return but shed 9.50% on Friday, the second-largest single-day loss in the top ten standings. Riot Platforms, Inc. fell 3.96% on Friday, the third-smallest decline. Its 86.62% YTD gain and $8.94 billion market cap reflect a company that has been selectively offloading bitcoin production while managing its transition to broader compute services. Core Scientific, Inc. dropped just 2.52% on Friday, the smallest single-day decline in the top ten cohort. The company carries a $7.72 billion market cap and a 66.82% YTD gain. Core Scientific has moved aggressively into AI colocation, anchored by a multi-year contract with Coreweave now valued at approximately $10.2 billion over 12 years. AI revenue already accounts for around 39% of its total revenue mix. MARA Holdings, Inc. posted a 6.39% single-day loss, bringing its price to $12.44. Its 38.53% YTD return still exceeds bitcoin’s performance. MARA sold more than 20,800 BTC in the first quarter of 2026 alone, using proceeds to retire debt and fund infrastructure expansion. The company was among the largest contributors to a record-breaking quarter in which publicly listed miners sold more than 32,000 BTC combined, surpassing both their full-year 2025 total and the previous single-quarter record set during the 2022 Terra-Luna collapse. Cleanspark, Inc. fell 5% Friday, trading at $13.28 per share. Its 31.22% YTD return edges above bitcoin’s negative reading. Cleanspark sold portions of its April production, including approximately 748 BTC across spot sales and options, while holding the majority of output. Bitdeer Technologies Group recorded the largest single-day decline in the group, dropping 9.59% to $13.34 a share. Bitdeer disclosed this week that it held zero bitcoin as of May 15, excluding customer deposits, having mined and sold all 198.3 BTC produced during the period. Its 18.95% YTD gain is the lowest on the list, though it still exceeds bitcoin’s year-to-date return. IREN Limited, ranked first by market cap at $19.14 billion, dropped 8.17% Friday and is down 12.37% over the past five days, the steepest five-day decline out of the top ten. IREN has committed to a $9.7 billion, five-year deal with Microsoft covering more than 200 megawatts powered by Nvidia GPUs, with a broader pipeline targeting up to five gigawatts in partnership with Nvidia. Cipher Digital Inc. slipped 7.82% on Friday, closing at $20.55 with an $8.4 billion market cap and a 39.19% YTD gain. Cipher has contracted hundreds of megawatts through multi-billion agreements, including deals backed by Google and Fluidstack. The broader context behind these YTD gains is a rapid and deliberate pivot away from pure bitcoin mining. The 2024 halving cut block rewards to 3.125 BTC while network difficulty continued climbing, pushing an estimated 20% of the industry into operating losses at various points in early 2026. Miners with power infrastructure in place moved quickly to convert megawatts from bitcoin production to AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, which offer longer contract terms and more stable revenue per megawatt. AI and HPC revenue will likely account for up to 70% of total revenue across listed miners by the end of 2026. Cumulative AI and HPC contracts across the sector now exceed $70 billion. Friday’s session on Wall Street was a uniform pullback across the top ten publicly listed miners. The year-to-date numbers reflect something more durable.

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