Bitcoin Mining Stocks Sink Friday Yet Still Beat BTC in 2026 Performance

Publicly-listed bitcoin miners took a beating on Friday, May 15, 2026, with every major traded mining stock dropping between 2.52% and 9.59% in a single session, even as their year-to-date gains outpaced bitcoin’s own performance by a wide margin.

Bitcoin Miner Stocks Suffer on Friday, But Still Hold Solid 2026 Gains

Bitcoin closed the week at $77,849, down 11.1% year-to-date. Yet all of the top ten miners today sit well above that figure, and the reasons why go beyond $BTC price action. Hut 8 Corp. leads the YTD group (out of the top ten publicly-traded mining stocks by market cap) with a 123.16% gain, trading at $102.52 per share despite sliding 6.26% on Friday.

Bitcoinminingstock.io data shows the company’s market cap stands at $11.54 billion. Hut 8 has been building out artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure under a $7 billion, 15-year lease at its River Bend site, offering GPU-as-a-Service and high-performance compute capacity to enterprise clients.

Terawulf, Inc. follows with a 95.56% YTD gain after dropping 7.03% on the day. Its market cap is $9.17 billion. Terawulf has contracted roughly $12.8 billion in HPC revenue, with deals tied to Google and Fluidstack-backed partners covering more than 200 megawatts of capacity. Applied Digital Corporation posted a 72.38% YTD return but shed 9.50% on Friday, the second-largest single-day loss in the top ten standings.

Riot Platforms, Inc. fell 3.96% on Friday, the third-smallest decline. Its 86.62% YTD gain and $8.94 billion market cap reflect a company that has been selectively offloading bitcoin production while managing its transition to broader compute services. Core Scientific, Inc. dropped just 2.52% on Friday, the smallest single-day decline in the top ten cohort.

The company carries a $7.72 billion market cap and a 66.82% YTD gain. Core Scientific has moved aggressively into AI colocation, anchored by a multi-year contract with Coreweave now valued at approximately $10.2 billion over 12 years. AI revenue already accounts for around 39% of its total revenue mix. MARA Holdings, Inc. posted a 6.39% single-day loss, bringing its price to $12.44. Its 38.53% YTD return still exceeds bitcoin’s performance.

MARA sold more than 20,800 $BTC in the first quarter of 2026 alone, using proceeds to retire debt and fund infrastructure expansion. The company was among the largest contributors to a record-breaking quarter in which publicly listed miners sold more than 32,000 $BTC combined, surpassing both their full-year 2025 total and the previous single-quarter record set during the 2022 Terra-Luna collapse.

Cleanspark, Inc. fell 5% Friday, trading at $13.28 per share. Its 31.22% YTD return edges above bitcoin’s negative reading. Cleanspark sold portions of its April production, including approximately 748 $BTC across spot sales and options, while holding the majority of output. Bitdeer Technologies Group recorded the largest single-day decline in the group, dropping 9.59% to $13.34 a share.

Bitdeer disclosed this week that it held zero bitcoin as of May 15, excluding customer deposits, having mined and sold all 198.3 $BTC produced during the period. Its 18.95% YTD gain is the lowest on the list, though it still exceeds bitcoin’s year-to-date return. IREN Limited, ranked first by market cap at $19.14 billion, dropped 8.17% Friday and is down 12.37% over the past five days, the steepest five-day decline out of the top ten.

IREN has committed to a $9.7 billion, five-year deal with Microsoft covering more than 200 megawatts powered by Nvidia GPUs, with a broader pipeline targeting up to five gigawatts in partnership with Nvidia. Cipher Digital Inc. slipped 7.82% on Friday, closing at $20.55 with an $8.4 billion market cap and a 39.19% YTD gain. Cipher has contracted hundreds of megawatts through multi-billion agreements, including deals backed by Google and Fluidstack.

The broader context behind these YTD gains is a rapid and deliberate pivot away from pure bitcoin mining. The 2024 halving cut block rewards to 3.125 $BTC while network difficulty continued climbing, pushing an estimated 20% of the industry into operating losses at various points in early 2026. Miners with power infrastructure in place moved quickly to convert megawatts from bitcoin production to AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, which offer longer contract terms and more stable revenue per megawatt.

AI and HPC revenue will likely account for up to 70% of total revenue across listed miners by the end of 2026. Cumulative AI and HPC contracts across the sector now exceed $70 billion. Friday’s session on Wall Street was a uniform pullback across the top ten publicly listed miners. The year-to-date numbers reflect something more durable.