Crypto mining stocks linked to the hot artificial intelligence (AI) data center trade were the fastest horses on Monday to recover from Friday’s market decline.
Bitfarms (BITF) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) rose 26% and 20% respectively on Monday, while Bitdeer (BTDR), IREN (IREN), and MARA Holdings (MARA) advanced around 10%. The rally reflects optimism that growing demand for AI computing will help miners.
Perhaps driving the sentiment was that ChatGPT creator OpenAI struck a deal with chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO) to create custom chips for AI and machine learning. Also on Monday, Bloom Energy (BE) announced a $5 billion deal with Brookfield Asset Management to deploy fuel cells in data centers to meet AI’s voracious energy demand.
The gains came after Friday’s sharp decline, as trade tensions between the United States and China escalated, with Trump imposing a 100% increase in tariffs on Chinese goods in retaliation for tightening export controls on rare earth metals. Investor concerns eased somewhat over the weekend, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indexes rising 2.1% and 1.4% on Monday.
Other cryptocurrency-related names enjoyed modest gains. Strategy (MSTR), the world’s largest bitcoin treasury firm, rose 2.8%, while cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was mostly flat. Digital brokerage Robinhood, which makes a large portion of its revenue from cryptocurrency trading, rose 1%.
Ethereum Meanwhile, treasury firm BitMine (BMNR) bounced nearly 7% as the firm said it would capitalize on the cryptocurrency drop of recent days, purchasing more than 200,000 tokens worth more than $840 million at current prices.
Read more: Tom Lee’s BitMine bought the dip and added over 200,000 ETH to the Ethereum treasury
