Crypto-related stocks posted strong gains Monday, bucking a broader market decline as investors rotated capital away from chip and artificial intelligence infrastructure names that have dominated recent market leadership.
Bitmine Immersion led the sector with an 11% surge after the company announced it had increased its ether holdings by nearly 10,000 coins valued at approximately $19.4 million at current prices, according to CNBC. Fellow ether treasury company Sharplink Gaming climbed 6% on the session.
Strategy, the pioneering bitcoin treasury firm, advanced 7% after disclosing it added to its cash reserves for a fifth consecutive week rather than purchasing additional bitcoin. Crypto exchange Coinbase Global, along with BitGo and Figure Technology, posted gains ranging from 4% to 6%.
Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group rose 2% following news that it had acquired IBM’s portfolio of more than 1,000 blockchain-related patents worldwide, though financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
AI Infrastructure Concerns Drive Rotation
The sector-wide strength in crypto stocks emerged against a backdrop of sharp declines in oil prices, falling Treasury yields, and continued risk-aversion toward memory chip stocks and direct AI plays.
According to Owen Lau, an analyst at ClearStreet, chip and AI infrastructure stocks faced pressure from concerns about circular financing and intensifying competition from Chinese semiconductor companies. This risk repricing accelerated capital rotation into alternative investment themes, including crypto.
Michael Donovan, senior research analyst at Compass Point, noted that weakness in AI-exposed stocks partly reflects concerns around capital expenditure requirements and whether companies may need to raise incremental capital at higher costs to fund their development pipelines.
Bitcoin Miners Caught in Crossfire
Despite the rally in other crypto stocks, bitcoin miners faced uniform selling pressure. Cipher Mining declined 8%, while Hut 8 and Terawulf fell 6% and 4%, respectively. The weakness extended even to pure-play bitcoin miners, with Riot Platforms losing 5%, Mara Holdings dropping 3%, and CleanSpark down 4%. Core Scientific, which has largely pivoted away from bitcoin mining, fell 9%.
The divergence reflects a shift in how investors value publicly traded bitcoin miners. According to CNBC’s reporting, these companies are increasingly viewed as owners of digital infrastructure — valued for their power capacity, data center assets, and energy contracts — rather than simply as bitcoin producers.
This infrastructure focus means even pure-play bitcoin miners like Mara Holdings and Riot Platforms can sell off alongside AI-exposed miners. The names often trade together through thematic baskets, sector ETFs, and algorithmic positioning that creates broad moves across the entire mining sector.
Donovan explained that some investors are questioning whether credit appetite for AI and infrastructure projects is approaching its limits, and which developers can fund their pipelines without significant dilution, expensive debt, or additional support from customers and strategic partners. He added that this concern may create near-term pressure for the group, even though the base compute infrastructure segment of AI remains structurally supply-constrained.
The backdrop for these moves included reports that Nvidia is in discussions to provide financial support for OpenAI’s plan to lease a new AI data center in Ohio, underscoring the growing role of credit in enabling AI investment.
Bitcoin itself showed little change, trading below the $65,000 level, while ether gained more than 1% to reach approximately $1,900.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/27/crypto-stocks-rally-thanks-to-rotation-from-ai-infrastructure-bitcoin-miners-lag.html
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