Bitcoin rose 22% in the week to 21 August after the US Treasury doubled its long-duration bond buybacks to at least $4bn per operation and President Trump pushed Congress on crypto legislation, forcing roughly $2.5bn of short liquidations in a day. The three companies most often described as the leveraged way to own that move did not participate. Across the sharpest two sessions, when bitcoin gained 14.7%, Hut 8 fell 1.5%, Cipher Mining rose 3.1% and TeraWulf 6.6%.

That is because the underlying business has changed and the label has not. All three began as bitcoin miners; all three now sign long-dated leases handing energized, grid-connected megawatts to artificial-intelligence tenants. The proper comparison is no longer hashprice. It is the cost of thirty-year money.

What each one actually earns

TeraWulf, which operates the Lake Mariner campus in western New York, is the only one where the conversion shows up as money. High-performance computing leasing brought in $31.9m in the second quarter, up 52% sequentially and now 71% of revenue. Gross margin reached 72.3%, from 53.6% a year earlier. After quarter-end it signed a 401 MW, 20-year lease with Anthropic in Hawesville, Kentucky, worth roughly $19bn, with first capacity due in the second half of 2027. Against that, it had 102 MW of operating capacity entering the third quarter — about a tenth of what it has contracted — and diluted shares up 25.5% year over year, to 485.7m.

Hut 8, cast by most coverage as the mining holdout, holds the largest contract book of the three: about 949 MW across its River Bend and Beacon Point campuses and roughly $26.6bn of base-term value. Its second Beacon Point lease, signed 20 July, runs 15 years over 352 MW with a 3% annual escalator. Yet 97% of second-quarter revenue — $72.5m of $74.9m — still came from mining. It funded the buildout with $7.5bn of non-recourse, fully amortizing project notes, and its diluted share count was flat.

Cipher Mining is the one where the decline has support in the numbers. Revenue fell 43% to $24.8m, at a gross margin of minus 209%, because the Black Pearl mining fleet was switched off before rent began. Its tenants are strong — Amazon Web Services holds a 15-year, 300 MW lease at Barber Lake — and three executed leases should yield about $793m of average annual net operating income from October. But consensus expects 2026 revenue to fall 14.1% before jumping 273% in 2027.

Why the shares fell anyway

The damage was done in earnings week, 3 to 10 August: Cipher lost 32%, Hut 8 22.6%, TeraWulf 13.6%. A second leg arrived on 18 August, when the 30-year Treasury yield touched 5.323%, its highest since 2007. Cipher fell 12.1% that session, TeraWulf 11%, Hut 8 7.5% — alongside CoreWeave's 12% drop. Nearly all the value in these companies sits in cash flows starting in 2027 and running to 2040, financed by debt; data-center paper with less-established tenants prices at 275 to 325 basis points over investment-grade benchmarks. Cipher's own project notes span 6.000% to 7.125% across roughly $4.54bn of non-recourse borrowings.

This was not a repricing of data-center property generally. Over the same 30 days Digital Realty rose 8.5% and Equinix 5.1%. It was a repricing of contracted-but-unbuilt megawatts carrying leverage.

Where the price sits

All three lose money, so earnings multiples say nothing. On price to gross profit, Hut 8 trades at 124 times trailing — and 124 times forward, no relief at all, with enterprise value at 209 times EBITDA, after a 231% twelve-month gain against a bitcoin price that fell 18.5%. TeraWulf compresses from 67.7 times to 42.3 times forward, the only one where growth does real work. Cipher's trailing gross profit is negative; its price-to-sales barely moves, from 33.7 to 30.1 times.

One credit sits behind a striking share of it: Anthropic is the named counterparty at both TeraWulf's Kentucky campus and Hut 8's River Bend. Both stocks had been in a strong uptrend in May; by July that had faded to something milder, and it has not recovered.

The setup

Where it stands — Three converted miners fell through August while bitcoin rallied, repriced as leveraged landlords rather than crypto proxies. Would confirm — TeraWulf's leasing revenue exceeding $40m in the third quarter with gross margin holding above 70%. Would invalidate — Shares tracking bitcoin roughly one-for-one over the next month, restoring the crypto-beta reading. Watch next — Cipher's Barber Lake Phase 1 rent, about 168 MW, is due to begin in October 2026. Valuation — Hut 8 at 124x gross profit trailing and forward; TeraWulf 67.7x falling to 42.3x; Cipher's is negative.