I don't see like a huge like hash rate growth from here.
Probably grow a bit, but not much.
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All right, folks.
Welcome back to Hashrate up.
Today, I am talking to Cindy Fang of Bitcoin Mining Stocks.
Let me show you her website quickly.
we have bitcoinminingstock.io this is Cindy's website she does a lot of public miner analysis
on here has a newsletter formerly she was with Bitdeer worked with their investor relations team
and their global marketing team then started her own thing and I don't often talk about public
mining because I feel like there's a lot of other outlets out here talking about public bitcoin
miners and stuff like that but once in a while it's good to to get an update she also works with
Nico and produces the yearly report that Digital Mining Solutions is putting out together with him.
So have a look at our website. We'll leave it in the description down below. We are recording at
933203 today. We are looking at a hefty downward difficulty adjustment of 3.58%.
we are 67 blocks too slow at the moment on average um yeah this is what difficulty has looked like
historically hash price is at 38 again with bitcoin dipping and um yeah the epoch is is almost done
but with that being said cindy welcome to the show thank you so much for your time the first question
i have for you is this current hash price environment what do you see how much pain do
you see in the market? Do you want to give us a brief overview over the public mining stocks out
there, all the companies that we all have heard about, and tell us how they're doing?
Okay, so when we talk about public mining companies compared to a few years ago, now we have more than
30 public mining companies. And if you look at how they are doing, that's a tough question. Are you
asking about the operation side or like a stock performance so obviously for me i'm more like a
stock side so um if you're asking yeah you tell me let's start the stock let's start on the stock
side you know how they're performing i mean does the market realize that hash price has been low
you know are still miners going up are they going down tell me i have assume i have no idea
Okay, so just today alone, like the whole market is mostly in red. Just a few had a
end of the day with like a positive gains. So it's a tough day, put it in that way. But
if we zoom out and then Bitcoin public miners are actually doing okay. For example, quite a few
companies in 2025 weigh more than like 200-300% gains. That's a lot, right? If you talk about
the investment perspective.
So it's kind of mixture, some part, great.
But some companies are also struggling in terms of share price.
What do you think is the biggest difference when what makes them struggle
and what makes them not struggle?
Is there like a clear picture to describe, you know, what helps them
and their stock price increase versus it going down?
What's the most interesting factor?
Okay, so now I think it's better if we look at a longer time frame.
So let's look at 2025.
Look at who did well and who actually ends the year with negative gains and in red.
So there is a clear path between the one doing well and the one not doing well.
We can say the one with the positive gains in 2025, Azure have a solid HPC AI play.
For example, they cite multi-billion dollar deals.
Or they haven't had any deals yet, but they are actively communicating to the public.
say oh we have secured so much power capacity and we are doing xyz to get ready for hpc data center
so this type of companies public companies they are they were doing well in 2025 and the one who
only communicate as like a pure play say they only do like a bitcoin mining they really had a
tough time especially if they are like a smaller market cap so uh i hope that helps
yeah no absolutely so are there any miners out there that haven't announced any sort of hbc or
AI strategy? What are the pure play miners that are public left? I would say quite a lot of them
haven't announced anything. How about this? As I mentioned, there are more than 30 public miners.
Let's just look at who announced the deals. So the first one obviously is the core certificate.
they announced in 2024 and in 2025 there were five public mining companies which were like
para wolf applied digital cypher mining iron and the hot eight and the rest of them
none of them announced any like a solid deal oh i just want to add one note so previously we also
heard about uh beta digital they were public miners uh but in last year they did they they
made an announcement and the pivot to like uh ethereum uh staking so they don't call them as a
mining company anymore so for them we exclude from the list okay fair enough yeah no it's very
interesting i mean what i'm seeing is is um that hash price is going to go up simply because a lot
of these miners are limiting their orders how what are you seeing orders from bitmain and microbt i
know there's a lot of talk of manufacturers also becoming um miners themselves because really
there's not that much demand anymore for the equipment can you talk to me about that a bit
Okay, so when I look at the obviously we could only see the public record from the first nine months of last year.
So during that period, only a handful of companies made like disclosure about their asset purchase.
And for those companies who made the purchase, the Bitmain S21 series is the most popular one.
That's a very popular option.
And only cipher mining had a partial order from McKenna.
that's from public record so we can say from there one compared to 2024 smaller order smaller
purchase amount less companies less public companies made asset purchase two bitman or
So, and miners was still the popular choice
among who made the purchase.
And for, when you talk about like,
or some manufacturers, they started like a self mining.
I believe last episode with Nicole you talked about that So for example Kena and Bitdeer they are manufactured as well right
And in 2025, we saw those two companies, their hash rate really grew a lot.
For example, Bitdeer grew like over 500% for their self-mining.
That's huge.
And now I think they enter the year with over 71 Degahush, which is more than Mara.
That's crazy.
So from there, you can say, oh, when there is not a huge demand or orders from other miners,
those manufacturers actually put their equipment in use for their own use.
Sorry, just sticking to Bitia,
who are now the biggest miners in the world,
I also saw that they recently overtook a marathon in that regard,
having the most hash rate online.
But I'm curious, right?
How do you think, obviously you have no perfect vision of the market,
but like if if you see this bit their story for instance right um they have this seal miner fleet
they want to sell their seal miners right now the market is seeing okay they're plugging them in
themselves instead of selling them what does the market see you think what does the market think
does it think okay that's positive because now you know bit is increasing all of uh their hash
rate their self-mining hash rate or are they seeing hey this is a negative because nobody's
buying these machines. And now when they're plugged in, that means there's less power available
that this company can use for AI. What do you think the market is seeing when you see hash rate
self-mining growth? Yes. So, you know, last week, B2D announced their hash rate. And
And so the day after the announcement, at least from a stock performance, the price actually went up quite a fair bit in comparison.
They ended the day as a top gainer within the public mining stocks.
So at that point of time, the market was excited because no matter who is the largest, it sparked interest.
But when you talk about if they plug in means like less demand, I think that could be valid as well.
So for the market, initial reaction was like a positive.
But now I think it's a mixture.
Also depends on the type of investors.
With the same thing, some people or some investors could perceive as positive.
Some could be negative.
But the one thing, at least, for example, Bitmain, we know many, they did like self-mining.
And we also saw some companies that bought their in-use assets.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing for some companies.
So overall, I think it's really hard to say, oh, it's definitely like positive or negative.
I think it really depends on investors, like from which perspective they look at.
check out solomining.de today yeah no it's it's curious because you would think okay look that
you got all these public filings you know got all these investors making decisions with their money
putting their money where their mouth is but then i often think like okay you know how can
how can public miners that pay their c-suite i don't know six figure salaries plus bonuses every
year how can they compete with with small miners on the cost basis and stuff like that but we
Before we get to sort of profitable mining operations out there, I want to ask you something else.
So recently we've seen in the used ASIC markets, we've seen huge decline in prices, right?
That is in part due to all these public miners not buying tens of thousands of new machines that then come to the market.
And Bitmain has slashed pricing on S19Ks.
Nobody knows what to sell their used gear for anymore because the floor pricing is scrap value.
And then it's anywhere between what's the efficiency, what's the hash rate, what's supply and demand like.
I'm seeing hundreds, thousands of miners hitting the market from all these dealers.
Do you see that investors of public miners price the assets that these miners have in stock or in use properly?
Like I'll give you an example, right?
You just mentioned S21s.
Today I've seen S21s being sold for $7.
If you're trying to sell them at volume, you're probably looking at more like $6, right?
And that's a huge decline from when they were bought.
Like how does the market value the machines that these miners have in stock and what their market pricing is?
Okay, that's a very interesting question because in 2025, the investor like focus really shift.
So if the first half year, investors probably still talk about the energy cost or the average cost for producing Bitcoin.
or even the asset like assets like lifetime life lifespan so actively talk about that talk about
whether three years is like appropriate when you do like accounting then the second half a year
this kind of discussion actually died out among investors because at that time,
their focus was about treasury strategies or HPC AI deals.
So it's really hard to answer how investors perceive the lifespan of assets nowadays,
because the focus is not on mining operations side anymore.
And I want to add that as proof.
So last year, you probably heard about public mining companies sharing their operation updates.
Now, quite many companies sharing that.
Then, for example, December until the end of the year,
there are probably around 10 or sometimes even less than 10 companies did regular monthly updates.
about the operation side.
So you can see how interest really dies out
from the topic itself.
Okay, but who decides that?
Who decides what is interesting and what isn't?
Because let's say I'm a public miner, right?
And I see, I don't know, my 20,000 ASICs
that I have on my books,
and I see their asset value declining.
You know, of course, that's a very interesting topic.
Right. But I don't know if I'm if I'm just allowed to exclude it because I think it's not interesting. How how does that work? Like, yeah.
That's just like your algorithm. You really have no idea which one would become a trending topic, which one would not. So it's really like people started talking about certain things and more people pick up the conversation and the certain things.
People just don't participate anymore.
So it's like invisible power out there.
And we don't know how everything happened in that way.
Why that thing becomes a trend or why not?
Are there any public miners out there that took on loans to buy ASICs Yes And now those loans are becoming you know the collateral of those loans are those ASICs
Does that still exist? And, you know, have you seen any interesting developments there with with minor prices decline?
So I'm not sure about the minor price decline because in general I don't pay much attention
on that side.
But I'll give you an example, for example, American Bitcoin that relatively went public
in September.
So I believe they had more than 2,000 Bitcoin as a collateral for Bitmain, for the machines.
So that's how they use some of the assets as a collateral.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Interesting.
And then just on the topic of treasury, right?
I don't know if you've probably seen this headline of Riot selling record amounts of their treasury.
How are these miners doing today?
Are more companies having to do that, sell down some of their treasury to survive the low hash price environment?
So I would like to say that in general, for the past few years,
miners they mine and they hold like a certain portion of bitcoin for a certain period of time
and last year at least like first half year through like october we see we see most like
public miners they hold their bitcoin they did sell then in like october for example
mara started to sell small portion and later like november december like you mentioned the
ryan's sold up quite a large portion of their holding so i guess it's really just the
the judgment of the market and another thing for riant is they just bought some
some new land they are going to develop for hpc data center they need a funding so are they going
to raise the fund from the capital market or they want to use make most of their like holding just
as a strategy, sell it to find the necessary operation when it's the right time, they believe.
So that's something to consider.
It's not only all about the market, maybe for their operation needs as well.
What do you think are sort of the top miners going into 2026, the top public ones?
What would be your picks to perform well?
That's really tricky question because not many factors we can't foresee.
And also, as we mentioned, nobody knows what would become a trend.
And once a new trend emerges, then there will be a new group of leaders or a new group of winners in terms of stock performance.
just like who would think like Aaron applied digital or like a cipher mining became a top
three in 2025 right so for this question I would say too tough I can't even like give a one name
or two name okay yeah no I guess it would be I don't know if I were to to invest in the stock
market i'll probably look at the ai stuff as well and how believable it is right who owns the most
energy contracts yeah because i think you know at the end of the day that's that's what's important
is you know owning the infrastructure um yes and then absolutely but uh yeah so even though many
factors would like affect the stock performance but the one you mentioned is the hot asset in
infrastructure or energy contract will ultimately define how like how they can
take a profit because even if they don't do like mining there are other ways they can make a mess
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Do public miners release what their cost to mine Bitcoin is
or what their all-in pricing is for energy,
like including wages and debt service and all of that stuff?
So as I mentioned, in the first half year of 2025,
in general, big public miners, for most of them,
at least they will talk about the energy cost.
They say the energy cost per Bitcoin is XYZ.
Only very few say all-in costs.
So that's a really rare occasion to say all-in
because as you mentioned earlier,
some companies had a huge executive packages.
And if you really take into consideration, that's not competitive at all, right?
So I guess for that reason as well, most companies, they don't talk about the all-in cost.
And what do you think it is?
administration what if you had to guess like you know are they mining profitably right now or not
like what fleet efficiencies and stuff like that can you can you make educated guesses there based
on the public filings that they have to put out uh i because with the current like a difficulty
and a harsh price, I think it's really struggling to make a profit.
Okay, let's step back.
If a business is really profitable, then you don't want to pivot.
You don't want to think about other business revenue, right?
So we actually see more and more companies pivot.
maybe HPC, AI, all other things.
They must be like us.
Sorry to interrupt you, Cindy,
but do you think it's a weakness or a strength
to have shareholders partly dictate
what it is that they want you to do, right?
If you have a public mining stock
and people are withdrawing their investment
and they're selling your share
because you're not pivoting to AI,
but I mean leadership is experts in the field and they think like look there's a chance that hash
price bounces back everybody's pivoting to AI you know there's limited machine hash rate growth like
there's a chance that hash price goes back to 70 or 80 and then you know Bitcoin mining stocks might
be you know flying again I just I'm on the fence sort of about you know how short-sighted is it
to pivot to ai sure it's here to stay but you know what does growth look like in five or ten
years from here because you make these decisions and then they're final you know it's not like they
can quickly pivot between bitcoin mining and ai whenever they want to like you know if you buy
this expensive infrastructure you you have to use it yeah i i got your point um very sad thing just
Just like many surveys we get or even politics many of them don really make sense from a long view But for example public company shareholder is their biggest responsibility
right so they they need to report to the board to the shareholders their ultimate goal is not to say
oh in 10 years 20 years the company will be the like the top one companies or their goal is or how
they can get investment return for their shareholders.
Because even for executive team,
their term could be just a couple of years.
And if a share price does not perform well,
sometimes they even need to step down.
It does not matter whether you are a funder or someone like that.
that it's really sad but that's the reality okay so let's say you were to give advice here what
what do you focus on as a public miner for 2026 what is the most important um most important
aspects of running your business so generally i like to pick three things for i think that's easier
So first of all, have to look at the revenue.
So no matter they choose to go pure play, only doing Bitcoin mining, or they want to different strategies.
Overall, does the revenue really sustain for certain period of time?
If not, they have to think about the solution.
So this is the first one, revenue.
The second thing, they need to look at the balance sheet because again, as a public company,
investors, they will look at how strong is your balance sheet and from there, they'll do some
valuation. So in order to perform well, or in other words, please investors, you need to do well
with your balance sheet. And the last thing, and quite often overlooked by company, is
like a communication with the public. Like I mentioned before, in 2025, the companies
who did well in comparison on those ones who ever secured a multi-billion dollar deals
or who actually actively disclose or communicate with investors what they are doing, what's
their next move.
So that transparency or communication or clarity really helped with the company as well.
So for me, if I can only pick a few things, I think there's a few very practical things
to look at.
okay so revenue treasury balance sheet and then third but not last last but not least the third
one would be investor relations actually communicating yeah yeah yeah yeah okay interesting
and then so if you think sort of this year just started right next year you and nico are going to
sit down again to write the report what do you think will have surprised you the most like what
you think is going to stand out this year? Do you have any takes?
Um, if you talk about surprise, I think you would call it a surprise name, it would be,
it would not be a surprise anymore. Right. But I, ultimately, I think Bitcoin mining is resilient.
And even though we think it has some challenges now, but I'm sure there would be some other way to operate or play or profit.
So we'll probably still say like a hash rate or things like that.
just like Bitcoin mining just work just as a fine.
I think that would be the thing,
even though right now we talk about the companies pivot to HPC AI,
probably less hash rate, less mining.
But I think mining will be here to stay,
just maybe in different formats we didn't know before.
Yeah, fair enough.
all right so we're gonna do a quick round of rapid fire and then i'm gonna ask you to tell
people where to find more about you okay okay sure all right first one current hash price
is this a low or do you think we're normally we're going to hover around 40 50 for the long term
uh i think i'm pretty low and yeah because you know why
Do you think AI data centers have to work with Bitcoin mining?
Or is Bitcoin mining not necessary for AI?
I think it would be a good combo if they work together.
Yeah.
Give an example.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Give an example.
No, no, no.
Give an example.
It's good.
Okay.
Give an example.
So we know HPC data center is very expensive.
And, you know, before you get everything ready and secure some deal,
that is a long lead time.
But the Bitcoin mining, on the other hand, is flexible.
You can actually generate some cash flow before, even before that.
Why not do something like that?
Yeah, I think that's the strategy that CleanSpark has announced, right?
That they are going to use Bitcoin mining as its anchor and then build out the AI infrastructure.
In the meantime, make sure that they use the ASIC fleet that they have and use it as a tool to solve a new problem, right?
Okay, so what do you think is the most underrated public miner?
Most underrated, maybe some like foreign entity. The companies that are headquarters are not in the US. I don't want to give names because, but you can, if you know, then you know.
If you know, you know. What's the most overrated public miner?
um most overrated just check the enterprise um uh like e and the price value um divided by the
like mac watts then you also get the answer all right all right so we'll have to do our own math
um what's asic prices what's asic prices are going to do are they gonna go up again
or are they going to go further down um let me guess i think after a long prolonged low price
probably go up at some point all right fair enough and now difficulty at the end of the year
is it going to be up 20 or down 20 from here i or somewhere in between i i think it probably
relatively similar to the current level because uh at least i don't see like a huge like harsh
rate uh growth from here probably grow a bit but not much and probably some decline somewhere so
yeah i think yeah i think that there's a there's a good chance that hash price is going to
skyrocket especially if bitcoin um has a good year you know because i think uh hash rate growth
is going to be limited um and then bitcoin price can really pull up the hash price as well
all right cindy cool thank you so much um bitcoin mining stock.io where else can people find you
uh can find me uh linking or x so it's all just my name it's cool perfect yeah we'll make sure to
put all of that in the description. If you have questions, go follow her on LinkedIn X, go visit
her website. It's all in the description down below. Subscribe to the newsletter as well. I know I will
to keep tabs on what the public mining market is doing. Thank you so much, Cindy Fang of Bitcoin
Mining Stock. See you next time. Thank you. Bye-bye.