Are BTC mining stocks affected by AI data center depreciation?

Among the top 10 BTC mining stocks, eight are preparing to end the year with significant net gains. The companies got a boost with a pivot to AI and the transformation of previous mining projects. 

BTC mining stocks are outperforming, despite the overall crypto market weakness. Toward the end of 2025, the top 10 BTC mining companies are mostly in the green, with significant yearly gains. 

As Cryptopolitan reported previously, BTC mining stocks had limited short-term volatility. The sector as a whole outperformed BTC and the overall crypto market growth. 

BTC mining stocks rise on AI data center promises

Among the top 10 BTC mining stocks, eight were preparing to end the year in the green, with gains ranging from 12% for Core Scientific to 328% for Iren Limited. 

Separate stocks also outperformed in short-term timeframes. Hut 8 was among the top performers, gaining 46.73% in the past month and over 24% in the past week alone. 

Hut8 is up 112% in 2025, rising from the $12 range in March to over $50. Hut8 is yet to recover its peak above $72 from 2021, when the shares rose due to intrinsic crypto enthusiasm. The company’s yearly success reflected the sale of mining assets to American Bitcoin, Eric Trump’s pure play mining company. 

The other prominent mover in 2025 was IREN. The shares peaked above $66 in November and backtracked, but retained some of their gains at over $42. IREN also had a year-end rally, adding 24% in the past five days. 

The recent IREN price rally followed a progress report on its Childress, Texas data center. The flagship operation is preparing to deliver high-energy compute, with Microsoft as one of its major clients. The company prepares to launch two 100mW facilities with GPU superclusters. 

Are BTC mining stocks affected by AI data center depreciation?  

The biggest problem for BTC mining stocks may be the depreciation schedule of their AI spending. 

In total, the AI sector has planned significant spending in the coming years. One of the big problems is that companies are using 3-5 year depreciation cycles to write off the initial investments. 

The immediate problem is that depreciation may quickly overcome the real revenues of AI companies. BTC mining stocks may have a slight advantage in building smaller data centers. The companies also worry that the real useful life of chips may be much lower compared to the write-off period. 

The AI chip bubble has been noted by investor Michael Bury, also pointing attention at the low useful life of chips and the potentially inflated depreciation periods. 

As a result, BTC mining stocks are not a proxy or an offset of the crypto market, but a subset of AI mining stocks. For some of the companies, crypto mining is still a part of operations, though at a much lower rate of investment and growth.

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