More and more bitcoin miners are starting to undertake a strategy harnessed by MicroStrategy , according to JPMorgan. MicroStrategy shares have been one of the hottest trades of the year as cryptocurrencies rallied to new highs and the victory of President-elect Donald Trump set off another wind as investors bet the new administration would adopt a more favorable stance toward digital assets. MSTR YTD mountain Shares this year The Michael Saylor-run software company has been widely known for snatching up the digital currency in recent years, with shares up more than 500% amid the monster rally. Bitcoin hovered above $100,000 on Thursday. The trend to buy up bitcoin is catching on with mining stocks, noted JPMorgan's Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou. This is due in part to the rise of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which have replaced the use of mining stocks as proxies for the trade. "Rising network hashrate and reduced mining rewards post-halving have put significant pressure on profitability with the daily revenue generation by miners on a per terahashrate basis ($/TH/s/day)," he explained. "This likely prompted miners to hoard or seek further investments into bitcoin or diversify into AI/[high-performance computing] businesses as discussed in our previous publications." This includes companies such as Mara Holdings , which is using a method called BTC yield, he said. "The strategy focuses on increasing bitcoin holdings per share over time by issuing equity or debt to either hoard their mined bitcoins or to actively purchase additional bitcoins," Panigirtzoglou explained. Mara does this by balancing its purchasing and mining of the cryptocurrency, he said. The company, which now holds 35,000 bitcoins, is also issuing convertible notes to leverage these purchases. Miners have also begun financing their operations via debt and equity versus selling bitcoin reserves, which should assist in boosting their market position and financial strength. BTC.CM= YTD mountain Bitcoin's year-to-date performance There are risks to holding more bitcoin given the volatility of the digital asset. These companies have also become proxies for playing the fluctuation in cryptocurrency prices, which can be very volatile. Along with MicroStrategy, some other significant miners with bitcoin holdings include Riot Platforms and CleanSpark . Riot Platforms is down more than 16% this year, while CleanSpark has rallied 17.5% but has still underperformed the broader market.
