AOL.com notes that while Bitcoin prices have fallen sharply, mining companies have surged 90% as they repurpose idle rack space and power contracts for AI inference and hosting services.
The Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (NASDAQ:WGMI) has surged 97% over the past year, even as Bitcoin has shed 46% of its value during the same period. This divergence stems from a fundamental shift in the underlying assets: WGMI holds publicly traded mining companies that have quietly pivoted away from cryptocurrency extraction toward artificial intelligence infrastructure. Multi-billion-dollar AI leasing agreements signed by Riot Platforms (NASDAQ:RIOT), Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ), and IREN (NASDAQ:IREN) have effectively decoupled the fund from the asset it was originally designed to track. Investors continuing to treat WGMI as a leveraged Bitcoin proxy are analyzing a vehicle that no longer behaves as one.
As an actively managed basket of mining equities, WGMI shares recently traded near $53, reflecting a 38% year-to-date gain. By contrast, Bitcoin hovers around $63,000, down 28% year-to-date. The economics of traditional mining have deteriorated sharply; Riot Platforms reported that its cost to mine a single Bitcoin reached 70% of the coin’s production value last quarter, up from 50% a year earlier. Left to mining operations alone, these companies would face severe headwinds. Instead, their recent performance is driven entirely by AI infrastructure leasing.
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The pivot is anchored in massive, long-term contracts. Core Scientific secured a 15-year AMD lease generating more than $14 billion in base contracted revenue across 530 megawatts. IREN finalized a five-year, $3.4 billion NVIDIA cloud agreement alongside a NVIDIA investment of up to $2.1 billion, which vests as GPUs are deployed. Riot layered a 20-year, 191-megawatt lease with a frontier AI lab atop its existing AMD arrangement, bringing its total contracted data-center revenue to $9.8 billion.
Artificial intelligence hyperscaler capital expenditure is now the primary macro variable driving WGMI over the next twelve months. The pace at which AMD, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and frontier AI labs continue issuing multi-billion-dollar power-and-compute commitments will determine the terminal valuation of the fund’s top holdings. Core Scientific CEO Adam Sullivan noted analysts that “there’s a lot of GPUs sitting on the ground, and those GPUs still need to be plugged in,” while IREN CEO Dan Roberts stated, “all of our operational capacity is fully contracted.”
Investors should bookmark quarterly hyperscaler capex presentations and ERCOT’s Texas interconnection updates. For instance, Core Scientific anticipates an ERCOT Pecos load-study result on August 7, 2026; delays in this process directly push back AMD hardware delivery dates. These metrics require monthly tracking. A slowdown in AI capex guidance will impact these equities first, as the current bull case relies on fifteen-year leases rather than blockchain hash rates.
Because WGMI is actively managed, the portfolio manager’s rebalancing decisions represent the single most critical fund-level variable. The miners responsible for the past year’s outperformance are precisely those with executed hyperscaler contracts: Riot at $9.8 billion contracted, Core Scientific at more than $24 billion in potential contracted revenue across 1.1 gigawatts, and IREN at $3.1 billion in annual recurring revenue under contract. Over the trailing year, IREN has risen 152%, RIOT 66%, and CORZ 43%.
Monthly reviews of the fund’s published holdings should compare the weighting of AI-pivoted names against pure-play miners. If the manager rotates into traditional laggards chasing Bitcoin mean reversion, the fund’s BTC beta will snap back, erasing the decoupling that generated the 97% trailing return. Sustained outperformance depends on maintaining elevated weights in RIOT, CORZ, and IREN.
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Investors seeking direct Bitcoin exposure have selected the wrong vehicle. A spot Bitcoin ETF, such as the iShares Bitcoin Trust (NASDAQ:IBIT), provides direct commodity exposure without the AI infrastructure overlay. This distinction carries unprecedented weight today, as the fund’s largest holdings now function primarily as real estate and power landlords.
Market participants should monitor the next wave of hyperscaler capex guidance from NVIDIA, AMD, and Microsoft, alongside ERCOT interconnection updates, for macro signals. Simultaneously, track WGMI’s upcoming holdings disclosures for fund-specific signals. Should either indicator shift against AI-pivoted miners, the 46% decline in Bitcoin that WGMI has so far shrugged off will begin to exert downward pressure once again.
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