Bitcoin miners are seeing an influx of investor interest following Core Scientific's AI deal with CoreWeave, the report said.The bank notes that the total market cap of the 14 miners it tracks has grown by 22%, or $4 billion, since the announcement, versus a 7% drop for bitcoin and a 3% increase for the S&P 500 stock index. Core Scientific said it had signed a 200 megawatts artificial intelligence deal with the cloud computing firm earlier this month.
Overweight-rated Iris Energy is best positioned to take advantage of the opportunity, the report said, noting that the company has excess power capacity and is not wedded to bitcoin mining. Iris Energy was early to embrace the HPC trend and is already running graphics processing units at its facilities, the bank noted. The firm has a track record of building and delivering high-quality data centers on time and has access to a decent amount of power.
Neutral-rated Cipher Mining has attractive power costs and a strong operational history, but has a smaller power pipeline than Iris Energy, the bank said. Riot Platforms , also overweight rated at JPMorgan,"remains fully committed to bitcoin mining," and has not shown much interest in HPC despite its abundance of power capacity.
Underweight-rated Marathon Digital and neutral-rated CleanSpark "screen the most expensive on an enterprise to energized power basis," the report said.in a variety of blockchain and digital asset businesses and significant holdings of digital assets, including bitcoin. CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence.