Bitcoin is on fire. All thanks to a growing appetite for risk among investors. In fact, according to Barron’s, “Crypto fundamentals are taking a backseat here and the primary driver is what the overall appetite is for risky assets,” said Edward Moya, an analyst at broker Oanda.
If the bottom is finally in, investors may want to consider jumping back into BTC mining stocks, like Riot Blockchain (RIOT) and Marathon Digital (MARA). That’s because, as BTC moves higher, the miners typically follow.
With RIOT, the crypto mining stock just ran from about $3.30 to $7.72 on the BTC recovery. Now, if the stock can break above resistance around $8.33, it could eventually revisit $20.
Helping, RIOT just announced, it “achieved a number of key milestones during the month of December,” said Jason Les, CEO of Riot. “We successfully deployed an additional 16,128 S19-series miners, bringing our hash rate capacity to a new all-time high of 9.7 EH/s. Additionally and as previously indicated in our last monthly production update, we transitioned to a new mining pool in early December. Based on our expanded hash rate capacity and while predominantly operating in our new mining pool, Riot achieved a new record of 659 Bitcoin produced this past month.”
With MARA, the mining stock just ran from $3.20 to $8.51.
We’d like to see it closer to $15.
According to the company, “In 2022, we made significant progress in increasing our hash rate while also transitioning to more sustainable power sources,” said Fred Thiel, Marathon’s Chairman and CEO. “Despite challenges earlier in the year, we doubled our hash rate to 7.0 exahashes per second year-over-year, with a majority of it now located at the King Mountain wind farm in West Texas. We finished the year with one of our most productive quarters to date, producing 1,562 Bitcoin in the fourth quarter.”
Again, if BTC can push higher, RIOT and MARA are likely to follow.
