Despite the weekend slump, Bitcoin has grown by more than 22% since the start of the year, but public mining companies listed on the NASDAQ are struggling to keep up the pace. The equivalent weighted basket of mining stocks exceeded just 12% between January 1st and August 18th.
However, its low performance masks the reversal over the past two months as miners surge over 46% against a 11% rise in Bitcoin, turning performance spread into positive territory over a short time frame.
The branching indicates the structural risk of listed mining strains and the inverse concentration bursts that appear when conditions are aligned. Understanding where miners go and where they overshoot is important to assess their role as a proxy for Bitcoin exposure.
The dispersion within the group was extreme throughout the year. Aylen and Wolf lead the pack with early-year profits of 101% and 81.5% respectively. At the same time, BTDR reduced by 36%, Hive 23.8%, and BITF reduced by almost 16%. Traditionally one of the most liquid names, Mara has dropped by almost 7%. This major difference in performance shows whether minor returns simply rely on Bitcoin’s performance on balance sheet management, funding events, and operational details.
The short-term window shows very different images. In the 10 days ending August 18th, Miners Basket rose 17.3% and Bitcoin slipped 0.5%. The rally was wide, with Wolf being wider, 97%, 22.8% sheds, 29.2% CIFR and 9.3% BITF.
During this stretch, BTC’s flat price action shows how miners can outperform in bursts, even if the underlying asset stalls. The 30-day data confirms its effectiveness. The miners rose 4.8% and BTC fell 1.6%, again creating a positive spread of more than 6% points.
These bursts are not uniform in size. Wolf and Aylen dominate recent profits, while Mara and CLSK have fallen by 17.9% and 22.4% over the past 30 days. That imbalance shows that Larry is about stock-level catalysts and positioning, just like the Bitcoin beta.
The risk metrics further show how uneven this performance is. Over the past 60 days, several miners will display the high-betta behavior in textbooks. Glee is a beta of 1.57, a BTDR of 1.44 and a Mara of 1.39. But the correlation tells a different story. Despite the doubled price, Wolf shows a negative correlation with Bitcoin on the same horizon. Aylen has grown by more than 100% since the start of the year, and also shows a near-zero correlation.
Drawdowns strengthen the structural gap between miners and bitcoin. The maximum drawdown for BTC in 2025 is 28%. In contrast, most miners suffer from 43-72% drawdowns. Even after the rebound, the scars from the first half remain visible in the price trajectory. Investors who size miners as leverage proxy for BTC should explain these stock-specific risks, especially during the integration phase of the underlying assets.
Minor baskets of equal weights capture a wider image better. It delayed Bitcoin by 7.7 percentage points from the start of the year, but surpassed 35.6 points in the past 60 days. The path dependency here is central.
From January to June, miners withstand a sharp decline as the hashprice was compressed, energy costs rose and the balance sheet absorbed stress. Larry has turned the spreads decisively overturned since late June, but it was too late to erase the previous gap.
This means that miners aren’t just leveraging Bitcoin. They act as high-betta equipment only in the selected window, but stock-specific catalysts determine returns for most of the year. In this environment, risk budgeting based on simple beta assumptions fails.
Timing and inventory selection is essential. Owning the wrong miner at the wrong time meant drawing down more than twice as deep as Bitcoin, and holding an Airen or Wolf meant triple digit profit.
Mining stocks can provide upside-down convexity at the strong market stage, pose stock market volatility, operational leverage, and financing risk. The data shows that leverage reduces both ways. Even if a handful of names were offered on the exceptional upside, an equal weighted index has degraded BTC’s performance since the start of the year.
High Beta, Low Correlation: Minors’ breaking out of the Bitcoin pattern first appeared in the encrypted ones.
