Hut 8 craters 11% despite a $19.6B Beacon Point backlog, while TeraWulf falls 5% and IREN drops 3%.
Friday’s selloff in AI-pivoting Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) miners closely mirrors their 2026 gains, a pattern characteristic of profit-taking and position unwinding rather than a fundamental reassessment of corporate contracts or unit economics. Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) leads the group’s decline, down 11% to $78.54 in Friday morning trading. Despite posting the steepest drop, Hut 8 carries the largest signed AI data center backlog among former miners, and the move occurred without any same-day corporate announcements.
TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) slid 5% to $15.58, a more moderate decline that aligns with its smaller year-to-date advance. Similarly, IREN (NASDAQ: IREN) fell just 3% to $41.20, marking the mildest pullback and reflecting its comparatively modest 2026 gains.
The broader trend is underscored by the Global X Data Center and Digital Infrastructure ETF (NASDAQ: DTCR), which dipped only 0.6% to $28.30. This minimal movement contrasts sharply with the steep declines within the miner segment, signaling that traders are not selling on concerns about broad AI data center demand.
Ranking the three miners by their 2026 performance and Friday’s losses reveals an identical sequence. Through Thursday’s close, Hut 8 had surged 93% year to date and suffered the day’s largest drop. TeraWulf was up 43% year to date and declined 5%, while IREN, up 13% year to date, posted the shallowest fall at 3%.
This direct proportionality confirms that the market is taking profits rather than re-underwriting long-duration contracts or underlying economics. Investors are specifically unwinding the high-conviction bet that legacy Bitcoin miners can successfully monetize scarce power and shell space for AI tenancy—a narrative that experienced violent upward repricing earlier this year.
Options markets continue to reflect bullish sentiment across the sector. Hut 8’s put-call ratio stands at 0.45, TeraWulf’s at 0.37, and IREN’s at 0.34. With substantial call exposure now facing compressed upside potential, traders have strong incentives to trim positions.
Hut 8’s massive backlog is not new information, but it contextualizes both the stock’s prior rally and its current leadership in the decline. On May 6, Hut 8 commercialized the first phase of its 1-gigawatt Beacon Point AI data center campus in Texas, securing a 15-year, 352-megawatt IT lease with a base-term contract value of $9.8 billion. By July 20, the company finalized a second 352-megawatt IT lease, elevating the campus-level base-term contract value to $19.6 billion.
Both milestones predate Friday’s trading session. During an August 4 earnings call, Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot stated that total contracted AI data center capacity across the Beacon Point and River Bend projects totals approximately 949 megawatts, representing roughly $26.6 billion in expected aggregate base-term contract value. With initial data hall deliveries targeted for Q3 2027 at Beacon Point and Q2 2027 at River Bend, none of this contracted revenue has yet impacted the income statement.
The Global X ETF’s stability provides the clearest evidence that broader AI infrastructure demand is not being repriced. The fund has risen 35% year to date through Thursday’s close, participating meaningfully in the thematic rally, yet its Friday decline remains negligible compared to the miners. DTCR’s holdings skew toward established data center REITs and communications tower operators, with the top three positions each comprising over 9% of net assets.
This divergence highlights a rotation out of the highest-beta segment of the AI infrastructure trade rather than a sector-wide downgrade of demand fundamentals. (For context, we recently profiled seven key suppliers driving the buildout, spanning power and cooling solutions, in a complimentary research report.)
For Hut 8 investors, the critical near-term catalyst is whether Beacon Point’s contracted backlog begins translating into recognized revenue. While the contracts are executed, the associated cash flows have not yet materialized; reported Q2 2026 revenue of $74.93 million continues to derive primarily from traditional compute operations rather than the AI lease pipeline underpinning the equity thesis.
Given how precisely Friday’s selloff tracked prior gains, investors should consider maintaining moderate exposure to this group. Hut 8’s 11% decline against DTCR’s 0.6% move illustrates the concentrated single-stock risk inherent in this niche. A disciplined approach—combining cautious position sizing with close monitoring of Hut 8’s upcoming quarterly report for initial Beacon Point revenue recognition—remains the most prudent strategy.