Bitcoin Mining Report Card

In a bitcoin mining report card published today, Bernstein has rated Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, IREN, and Core Scientific as “outperform” while rating Marathon Digital as “market perform.”

An outperform rating indicates that analysts expect a stock to exceed its market or sector performance. In contrast, a market perform rating suggests average expected performance.

The evaluations are based on five key metrics:
– Production and hash rate
– Operational and energy efficiency
– Power
– Hash costs
– Each company’s artificial intelligence strategy

According to Bernstein, the three largest bitcoin producers are Marathon, Core Scientific, and CleanSpark, with the latter two standing out due to their realized hash rate. Riot is lagging in production and efficiency, but it has offset this with power credits and improved production efficiency last month.

In terms of operational and energy efficiency, Bernstein claims that CleanSpark and IREN are excelling, being in the “sweet spots” of energy efficiency and realized hash rate/uptime. Marathon is expected to improve its uptime efficiency by transitioning to a self-mining model.

Both Riot and Core Scientific are the leaders in operational power capacity; however, IREN may catch up as it has “two mega sites in the works” in Texas.

Core Scientific is also recognized as the “best in class” for hash cost due to its low power costs and high uptime. Riot and CleanSpark trail behind in this metric, while Marathon is working to improve its hash cost.

Lastly, Core Scientific stands out as a clear leader in AI strategy, having dedicated considerable resources to data centers. IREN is described as a promising story in AI/HPC, particularly with its mega sites in Texas and its partnership with Morgan Stanley to explore AI deals.