Investors looking for Bitcoin exposure through mining stocks may be getting something increasingly different: a bet on data centers, electricity and artificial intelligence.
Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee’s ranking of 17 crypto-linked large-cap equities illustrates the shift. Over the measured 90-day period, Strategy showed a 78% correlation with Bitcoin, while Core Scientific registered just 16%. Cipher Mining, TeraWulf and Hut 8 came in at 17%, 18% and 19%, respectively.
BitMine Immersion Technologies, which Lee chairs, topped the Ethereum side at 80%, followed by Coinbase at 74%. BitMine’s expanding ETH treasury helps explain why its shares have become closely tied to Ether, while Strategy remains the clearest equity proxy for Bitcoin among the companies ranked.
AI Revenue Is Replacing Mining Exposure
The weak correlations are increasingly visible in miners’ financial statements. Core Scientific generated $164.2 million of second-quarter revenue, with $136.7 million coming from colocation and only $21.5 million from self-mining. The company is actively reallocating power from crypto mining toward long-term AI and high-performance-computing contracts.
TeraWulf has crossed the same threshold. First-quarter HPC lease revenue reached $21 million, compared with $13 million from digital assets. Management expects contracted computing revenue to reduce the company’s historical exposure to Bitcoin volatility.
IREN is earlier in the transition. Its March quarter produced $111.2 million of Bitcoin-mining revenue and $33.6 million from AI cloud services, putting AI at roughly 23% of total sales. The company nevertheless describes AI cloud as its strategic growth focus.
That broader AI pivot has already changed how investors value mining companies. Their scarce power connections and data-center sites can be more valuable to hyperscalers than their ability to produce Bitcoin.
Strategy Remains the Cleaner Bitcoin Proxy
Strategy’s 78% correlation underscores the contrast. Although its capital strategy has recently become more flexible, Bitcoin remains the core asset behind its valuation. Its evolving BTC strategy still leaves shareholders substantially more exposed to cryptocurrency prices than investors in miners shifting toward AI.
That does not make Strategy less risky. Corporate Bitcoin treasuries can amplify both gains and losses, and correlation measures direction rather than investment returns.
For mining stocks, however, the takeaway is more structural. As AI contracts replace mining revenue, their connection to Bitcoin should continue weakening. What once looked like leveraged BTC exposure is increasingly becoming an infrastructure trade built around megawatts, GPUs and long-duration computing contracts.
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