Bitcoin miners are no longer just Bitcoin miners. Matthew Sigel, Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, laid out a valuation framework that makes the pecking order brutally clear. Companies with leased or colocation-backed facilities are trading above 10x EV/EBITDA. Pipeline-stage companies, meaning those still developing their infrastructure, are stuck in the 2-6x range.
The numbers behind the divide
WULF, with 430 megawatts of contracted colocation capacity, is commanding a valuation of roughly 24.2x EV/EBITDA. CIFR, sitting on 300 MW of interconnection initiatives, comes in at about 19.9x. RIOT, with 600 MW of remaining capacity, trades at 15.6x.
The miners that have pivoted toward AI and HPC partnerships, like WULF and CORZ, are outperforming traditional Bitcoin miners on a year-to-date basis. Multi-year contracts with AI customers produce predictable cash flows. Bitcoin mining revenues, by contrast, swing with hash rate, difficulty adjustments, and a coin price that can move 20% in a week.
The arbitrage hiding in plain sight
