Public bitcoin miners dip but keep strong 2026 gains

Publicly traded bitcoin miners posted single-day declines on May 15, 2026, with losses ranging from 2.52% to 9.59%. Bitcoin closed the week at $77,849 and is down 11.1% year-to-date.

All ten tracked mining stocks fell on Friday. Bitdeer Technologies recorded the largest drop, sliding 9.59% to $13.34 after disclosing it held zero bitcoin as of May 15, excluding customer deposits, and that it had mined and sold 198.3 BTC during the period. Applied Digital fell 9.50%, Terawulf lost 7.03% and Cipher Digital slipped 7.82%. Core Scientific posted the smallest decline in the top ten, down 2.52%.

Despite Friday’s pullback, several listed miners show substantial gains for 2026. Hut 8 leads the group with a 123.16% year-to-date rise, trading at $102.52 and a market capitalization of about $11.54 billion. Terawulf is up 95.56% with a market value near $9.17 billion. Riot Platforms has gained 86.62% and carries roughly an $8.94 billion market cap. Core Scientific has risen 66.82% and is valued at about $7.72 billion. MARA Holdings is up 38.53% and traded at $12.44 on Friday. Cleanspark rose 31.22% and closed at $13.28. Cipher Digital closed at $20.55 with an $8.4 billion market cap. Bitdeer’s year-to-date gain stood at 18.95%.

Firms cited large commercial agreements and shifts in operations to explain revenue mix changes. Hut 8 is building GPU-based infrastructure under a $7 billion, 15-year lease at its River Bend site to offer GPU-as-a-Service and high-performance compute capacity to enterprise clients. Terawulf has contracted roughly $12.8 billion in HPC revenue tied to deals with Google and Fluidstack-backed partners covering more than 200 megawatts of capacity. Core Scientific’s multi-year arrangement with CoreWeave is valued at about $10.2 billion over 12 years, with AI-related revenue comprising about 39% of its total. IREN Limited committed to a $9.7 billion, five-year deal with Microsoft covering more than 200 megawatts powered by Nvidia GPUs and has a pipeline targeting up to five gigawatts with Nvidia. Cipher Digital reported multi-billion contracts and hundreds of megawatts under agreement, including deals backed by Google and Fluidstack.

The companies’ commercial activity followed changes in mining economics after the 2024 bitcoin halving, which cut block rewards to 3.125 BTC while network difficulty continued to rise. That combination pushed an estimated 20% of the industry into operating losses at points in early 2026, prompting some miners with power infrastructure to convert megawatts from bitcoin production to longer-term compute contracts. Cumulative AI and HPC contracts across the listed-miner sector now exceed $70 billion.

Selling of mined bitcoin accelerated as firms raised cash for expansion and debt reduction. MARA reported selling more than 20,800 BTC in the first quarter of 2026. Publicly listed miners collectively sold over 32,000 BTC in the same quarter, a quarterly record that exceeded their full-year 2025 total and the previous single-quarter high set in 2022. Riot Platforms has conducted selective sales of production while transitioning some capacity to broader compute services.

Friday’s trading session registered declines across the top-listed miners, with five-day and single-session drops most pronounced at IREN and Bitdeer. The market moves and the reported commercial agreements document recent operational shifts among publicly traded bitcoin miners.