The Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) has gained 97% over the past year while bitcoin has dropped 46% in the same span, as top holdings Riot Platforms, Core Scientific and IREN pivot from mining to multi-billion-dollar AI infrastructure leases. Riot's cost to mine one bitcoin now reaches 70% of the coin's value, making AI leasing contracts, not hash rates, the fund's real growth driver.
Miners Decouple From the Coin
The Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (NASDAQ:WGMI) has gained 97% over the past year. Bitcoin, meanwhile, has lost 46% of its value over the same window.
Shares recently traded near $53, up 38% year-to-date. Bitcoin sits around $63,000, down 28% year-to-date. Riot Platforms (NASDAQ:RIOT) reported its cost to mine one bitcoin reached 70% of production value last quarter, up from 50% a year earlier. Mining alone would sink these companies, so AI leasing is why the shares moved the other way.
Miners Sign Multi-Billion-Dollar AI Leases
Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ) signed a 15-year AMD lease worth more than $14 billion in base contracted revenue across 530 megawatts. IREN (NASDAQ:IREN) inked a five-year, $3.4 billion NVIDIA cloud contract, plus an NVIDIA investment of up to $2.1 billion that vests as GPUs deploy. Riot layered a 20-year, 191-megawatt lease with a frontier AI lab on top of its AMD deal, pushing its total contracted data-center revenue to $9.8 billion.
IREN CEO Dan Roberts said "all of our operational capacity is fully contracted". Core Scientific was awaiting an ERCOT Pecos load-study result on August 7, 2026, and delays there push back AMD delivery dates.
Stock Gains Widen the Gap
IREN shares are up 152% over the trailing year. Riot has gained 66% in the same span. Core Scientific is up 43%.
Investors who want direct bitcoin exposure are in the wrong vehicle here. A spot bitcoin ETF like iShares Bitcoin Trust (NASDAQ:IBIT) delivers the underlying commodity without the AI infrastructure overlay. If hyperscaler capex guidance from NVIDIA, AMD and Microsoft slows, WGMI's next holdings disclosure could show the fund rotating back toward pure-play miners, snapping its bitcoin beta back into place.
Source: 24/7 Wall St via Yahoo Finance
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