Shares in crypto mining companies IREN and CleanSpark sank on Thursday as their earnings came in below Wall Street expectations and Bitcoin’s slide saw traders turn risk-off.
Bitcoin (BTC) has fallen 12% over the past 24 hours to briefly touch a low of $60,000 early on Friday. Meanwhile, the crypto market capitalization fell by almost 9%, according to CoinMarketCap.
CleanSpark (CLSK) led the decline, closing trading on Thursday down 19.13% and falling another 8.6% after-hours to $7.55 after its results for the quarter ended Dec. 31 came in below analyst predictions.
CleanSpark said on Thursday that its revenues for the quarter ended Dec. 31 came in at $181.20 million, missing analyst estimates of $186.66 million by around 2.9%.
CleanSpark misses earnings, but eyes AI as profit booster
Analysts at Zacks said that the reduced mining rewards following the Bitcoin halving in April 2024 likely led to “lower mining efficiency” and therefore potentially “constrained profit” during the period.
CleanSpark reported a net loss of $378.7 million, a sharp year-on-year decline compared to the net profit of $246.8 million it reported for the same period in 2024.
CleanSpark’s chief financial officer and president, Gary Vecchiarelli, said that the company is “no longer a single-track business,” as it looks to artificial intelligence to boost profits.
“Bitcoin mining generates the cash flow, AI infrastructure monetizes the assets over the long term, and our Digital Asset Management function optimizes capital and liquidity across cycles,” Vecchiarelli said.
IREN shares fall on earnings miss
IREN Ltd, which has moved its core operations from Bitcoin to providing AI infrastructure, also missed earnings on Thursday, with its shares closing the day down 11.46% and falling an additional 18.5% after hours to $32.42.
IREN reported revenues of $184.69 million for the last quarter of 2025, missing Wall Street’s expectations by 16.49%. It posted a net loss of $155.4 million, compared to a net income of $384.6 million in the year-ago quarter.
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Other major crypto mining stocks also fell sharply on Thursday, with RIOT Platforms (RIOT) down 14.71% and MARA Holding (MARA) falling 18.72%, according to Google Finance.
With Bitcoin’s price down 29% over the past 30 days, sentiment across the crypto market has crashed to levels not seen in months.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell to a score of 9 out of 100 on Friday, its lowest since the fallout of the Terra collapse in mid-2022.
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