This high beta Bitcoin proxy sector is lagging behind BTC price 2025

Bitcoin is up nearly 10% since the beginning of the year, climbing from $94,383 to over $105,000 after several volatile months. However, the equity class that once served as a high-beta proxy for Bitcoin’s upside is failing to keep pace.

Publicly traded Bitcoin mining firms listed in the US are underperforming both the asset itself and the broader S&P 500 index, and in most cases, they’re underperforming by a wide margin. With capital flowing into spot Bitcoin ETFs and investor preference leaning toward direct exposure vehicles, the post-ETF launch environment has created a pricing regime where scale and operational strength no longer translate to equity outperformance.

The top five US-listed Bitcoin miners by hash rate (Marathon, Riot, CleanSpark, Cipher, and TeraWulf) have seen mixed results through 2025, with all but one posting double-digit YTD declines. In this report, CryptoSlate will dive deep into the performance of these mining stocks to analyze how their performance fares compared to Bitcoin’s spot price, direct exposure products like ETFs, and indirect vehicles like MSTR.

Year-to-date performance shows a stark contrast between miners and Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s spot price is up almost 10%, despite significant volatility throughout the first and early second quarter. Meanwhile, mining equities have struggled to retain investor interest after several years of continued upside, underperforming both Bitcoin and the S&P 500, which returned just over 8% since the beginning of the year.

CleanSpark (CLSK) has delivered the strongest equity performance in the peer group with a 4.1% return, driven by a combination of tight cost controls, regular BTC sales, and operational efficiency with its fleet averaging 17 J/TH. CLSK has also been active in fleet expansion, increasing its energized hashrate to 40.1 EH/s in April. Despite that growth, it continues to prioritize selling a portion of its production to support cash flow, avoiding excessive dilution.

Marathon (MARA), which operates the largest energized fleet at 57.3 EH/s and holds over 48,000 BTC, has declined 5.2% this year. Despite its size, the stock has underperformed the underlying asset by over 14 percentage points. Riot (RIOT) has seen an even steeper drawdown, falling 14.2% YTD. This drop occurred despite strong Q1 production, curtailment revenue from ERCOT grid participation, and a growing treasury that includes over 6,700 BTC.

Cipher Mining (CIFR) and TeraWulf (WULF) are the worst performers in the set. CIFR is down 21.1% despite reporting record revenue in Q1 and expanding its fleet to 13.5 EH/s.

TeraWulf has declined 26.7%, with investor sentiment weighed down by higher power costs and thinner operating margins post-halving. Both firms have relatively smaller BTC treasuries and operate with limited pricing power or geographical cost advantage, which exposes them more to margin compression during difficulty increases.

The total return spread between Bitcoin and its largest publicly traded miners shows a shift in how investors treated Bitcoin infrastructure stocks this year. These names are no longer being valued primarily for their sensitivity to BTC’s price, but are now increasingly evaluated on operational risk, cost management, and capital strategy.

Since April 1, all five major US-listed Bitcoin miners have posted strong gains, sharply reversing their underperformance from earlier in the year.

Cipher Mining (CIFR) leads with a 54.88% return over the past seven weeks, followed by TeraWulf (WULF) at 38.89%, Marathon (MARA) at 37.84%, CleanSpark (CLSK) at 30.16%, and Riot (RIOT) at 18.97%. This resurgence stands in contrast to Bitcoin itself, which gained just 4.7% over the same period. The sharp outperformance by miners signals a reacceleration of risk appetite among market participants.

Rather than signaling a return to pre-ETF beta relationships, the data most likely shows short-term positioning around post-halving earnings, power curtailment, and tactical plays on upcoming Q2 financial results.

The discrepancy between negative year-to-date returns and strong recent momentum shows a bifurcated market; early 2025 punished miners heavily, but investors have begun to rotate back in, albeit selectively and with higher expectations for margin stabilization and capital discipline.

The volatility profile of these mining stocks has added to their difficulty attracting risk-adjusted capital. Annualized 30-day realized volatility for each miner remains well above 85%, with WULF and CIFR showing vol levels over 110%. BTC’s own 30-day volatility sits at 47.2%, making it roughly half as volatile as the equities that supposedly offer levered exposure to it.

This asymmetric volatility has depressed Sharpe ratios across the board. While CLSK and MARA offer slightly better stability than their small-cap peers, they remain highly volatile assets with weak risk-adjusted profiles. CIFR and WULF, in particular, have become poor substitutes for exposure to BTC given their drawdowns and volatile intraday action.

Notional liquidity is still concentrated in the top two names. MARA and RIOT trade around $70 and $25 million per day on average, while CLSK handles around $17 million. CIFR, by contrast, averages just $4 million in daily turnover, making it more vulnerable to illiquidity discounts and larger bid-ask spreads. WULF’s $8 million daily average volume remains thin relative to its volatility.

The liquidity gap has tangible consequences. Institutional allocators looking for size are more likely to rotate into highly liquid ETF products or directly into BTC rather than assume execution risk in smaller miner equities. This rotation further suppresses performance and reinforces the underweight positioning of mining stocks in BTC-exposed portfolios.

Bitcoin miner equities have historically traded with high beta to BTC, offering leveraged exposure to upward moves in the spot price. In 2021 and 2022, MARA and RIOT regularly posted beta values well above 2.0 over 30- to 90-day windows. That high sensitivity was one of the primary attractions for institutional allocators seeking upside participation without custody risk.

That relationship had decayed by 2025. A regression of 60-day log returns shows beta drift for all major miners, with MARA falling from 1.38 in early March to 1.32 by mid-May. Riot has stabilized around 1.08 throughout the period, while CLSK slipped slightly from 1.30 to 1.27. CIFR and WULF remain the most reactive to BTC movements, but their high beta is offset by structurally weaker balance sheets, higher volatility, and more speculative capital flows.

There are two likely explanations for this structural beta decline. First, the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024 created an alternative route to BTC exposure that is highly liquid, tightly tracking, and free from operational execution risks. As institutional capital continues to adopt ETFs as their preferred Bitcoin vehicle, mining equities are no longer the primary beta instruments they once were.

MicroStrategy’s relative outperformance has not gone unnoticed. Since January 1, MSTR is up over 37%, almost quadrupling BTC’s return and far exceeding that of any public miner. This has led to further beta compression in mining stocks as allocators increasingly view MSTR and ETFs as more capital-efficient paths to Bitcoin exposure. In effect, MSTR has absorbed part of the beta that would have previously gone to MARA, RIOT, or CLSK.

Q2 earnings will provide the sector’s next inflection point. Investors will focus on cash cost per BTC, the proportion of mined BTC sold versus retained, and any updated guidance on power pricing or curtailment revenues. Firms operating in ERCOT, like Riot, may benefit from power sales during peak demand events this summer.

Another key catalyst is the network fee market. So far, post-halving transaction fees have not provided enough offset to compensate for reduced subsidy revenue. The equity narrative could improve if congestion increases and fees begin contributing materially to miner revenue.

Finally, regulatory clarity on the classification and taxation of BTC treasuries may influence market sentiment. If MicroStrategy continues to benefit from favorable tax treatment of its holdings while miners are subject to full opex disclosure and impairment rules, it could accelerate capital flight away from infrastructure plays toward treasury-heavy proxies.

The market environment in 2025 has made it clear that Bitcoin miners are no longer the de facto leveraged bet on BTC’s price. With spot ETFs and equity proxies like MicroStrategy outperforming and absorbing flows, mining stocks are being re-priced around fundamentals, volatility, and dilution risk rather than headline hashrate or treasury size.

The sector’s sharp recovery since April suggests the market is not entirely abandoning miner equities. The group’s 2-month performance, far outpacing Bitcoin’s own gains, shows that risk capital is returning selectively, likely on the basis of short-term earnings momentum and positioning ahead of Q2 results. This shows the need to evaluate miners not just by their YTD returns but also by the volatility-adjusted path of their recovery.

The beta trade is not dead, but it is conditional. CleanSpark’s year-to-date leadership and Cipher’s April rebound indicate that tactical outperformance is possible when execution aligns with timing. Going forward, miners will have to compete more aggressively for flows against ETFs and treasury-heavy proxies, and do so by delivering consistent operational margins and limiting shareholder dilution.

The next earnings cycle will determine whether miners can reassert their role in the capital stack or if ETF-driven beta compression continues to reshape how the market values Bitcoin’s industrial backbone.