Why a miner's stock moves more than bitcoin, worked from its own cost figures

A miner sells at a price it does not set, at a cost it cannot move quickly.

A bitcoin mining operation earns coins at a market price it does not set. The company may also have other businesses. Its costs are a different kind of number. The power contract was signed months or years ago, the machines were bought and are being paid for whether they run or not, and the people are on payroll. Some costs fall when machines stop, but these commitments cannot all change as quickly as the bitcoin price.

That combination, a price the company does not control and a cost it cannot change in the same period, is what makes a miner's result move more than bitcoin does. The mechanism is plain arithmetic, and two companies give enough figures in one filing to work it through: CleanSpark states its cost per bitcoin and its average revenue per bitcoin mined for the same quarter, and Riot states its cost and its production value per bitcoin for the same quarter. The cost article explains what each cost figure contains; this one uses them.

Margin per bitcoin is a difference, and a difference moves faster than either side of it.

Take CleanSpark's quarter ended Jun 30, 2026. Each bitcoin brought in 71,692 dollars and cost 44,406 dollars in direct costs, 44,317 of energy and 89 of other direct costs. The difference, 27,286 dollars, is the cash margin on the coin. Now move the price by a tenth, leave the energy cost where the quarter put it, and watch the difference.

Cash margin per bitcoin on the direct-cost basis, at the filed revenue per bitcoin and at a tenth above and below it. The filed figures are the companies' own; the two other columns are this page's arithmetic on them, and the prices are not forecasts.

Cash margin per bitcoin on the direct-cost basis, at the filed revenue per bitcoin and at a tenth above and below it. The filed figures are the companies' own; the two other columns are this page's arithmetic on them, and the prices are not forecasts.

Company	Direct cost	Revenue per bitcoin	Margin as filed	Margin if the price were a tenth lower	Margin if it were a tenth higher
CleanSpark	44,406	71,692	27,286	20,117	34,455
Riot	49,912	71,667	21,755	14,588	28,922

For CleanSpark a 10 percent move in the price is a 26 percent move in the cash margin, in either direction. For Riot, whose energy cost is a larger share of the revenue, the same 10 percent is a 33 percent move. The rule behind both: the closer the cost sits to the price, the more the margin swings for a given move in the price, because the margin is a smaller number being moved by the same amount of dollars. A company with costs at half its revenue per coin sees the margin move twice as fast as the price; at three quarters of revenue, four times as fast.

With depreciation counted, the same quarter is a loss per coin, and the price that would cover it is stated by the same figures.

The figures with depreciation include the wear on the machines and, in CleanSpark's definition, financing costs (none in the quarter ended Jun 30, 2026). On that basis the quarter reads differently: CleanSpark's 96,277 dollars against 71,692 dollars of revenue is 24,585 dollars short per coin, and Riot's 90,631 against 71,667 is 18,964 short. Both companies say so in their own filings, as a percentage: 134.3 percent of revenue for CleanSpark, 126.5 percent for Riot.

The price at which the cost with depreciation is exactly covered is just that cost itself: 96,277 dollars a coin for CleanSpark, 34 percent above what a coin brought in during the quarter, and 90,631 for Riot, 27 percent above. Below that price the company is, on this basis, paying for its machines out of the past; above it, the same gearing that made the loss makes the profit, and every dollar of price above the line is a dollar of margin, on a base that starts at zero. That is the whole of the leverage: it is not a property of the share, it is a property of a fixed cost sitting close to a moving price.

Why the cost does not follow the price down.

Three things hold a miner's cost per bitcoin where it is while the price moves. The power is bought under contracts, and where it is not, the company still owes for the building and the transformers that carry it. The machines were paid for, or borrowed against, at the moment they were bought; depreciation spreads that price over their life and does not care what bitcoin does. And the number of coins each machine earns is set by the whole network, not by the price: when more machines join the network, each earns fewer coins, so the same power bill is divided by fewer bitcoin and the cost per coin rises. The price can fall and the cost per coin can rise in the same quarter.

The year-over-year figures show how little the cost side moves on its own. CleanSpark's direct cost per bitcoin was 44,806 dollars in the quarter a year earlier and 44,406 in this one, a change of less than 1 percent. Its figure with depreciation moved more, from 86,428 to 96,277, and the filing's table shows why: depreciation per bitcoin rose from 41,601 to 51,871 while financing costs fell from 21 to none, which is the cost of machines already bought. Neither figure moved with the price of bitcoin, because neither is priced in bitcoin.

What does move a cost per bitcoin, over quarters rather than days, is the company's own choices: newer machines that do more work per watt, cheaper power, or hosted sites traded for owned ones. Those are the things the cost brief on the Companies page tracks, and they are the reason the direct figures of the miners compared in the cost article run from 34,400 dollars (IREN, quarter ended Dec 31, 2025) to 49,912 (RIOT, quarter ended Jun 30, 2026).

What the leverage does not tell you.

It does not tell you which way the price will go. The arithmetic is symmetric; a company geared to gain a third of its margin from a tenth on the price is geared to lose a third from a tenth off it. The site's specification calls the effect exponential leverage only for a miner whose all-in cost (the site's Method B, which counts payroll and general and administrative expense) sits below the price, and notes that above the price the leverage inverts. The figures above leave out general and administrative expense, so they are not that cost, but with depreciation counted, in the quarter above, neither CleanSpark nor Riot sat below its own revenue per coin; on the direct basis, both did. Which basis is the right one is the reader's question, not a fact in the filing.

It does not tell you what the share does. A share price carries the share count, the debt, the bitcoin the company holds, and whatever the market thinks of its datacenter plans, on top of the margin. The dilution article shows how the count alone can move what a share is worth without any change in the business. And it does not tell you that any company's cost will stay where it is: the filed figures are one quarter's, and the following quarter's will be filed about three months after it.

Owning a miner means owning a business, not a fixed amount of bitcoin.

A bitcoin holder keeps the same coin balance when a miner issues shares. A mining shareholder owns a claim on a business after its obligations: power contracts, machines, debt and management decisions. The attraction is operating improvement. Better efficiency, lower power prices or a successful new business can improve results even with bitcoin unchanged. The cost is exposure to execution, financing and dilution as well as bitcoin.

The middle case reduces bitcoin per share by a fifth even though no bitcoin was sold. Issuing shares may also bring cash or other assets into the business; this table isolates the bitcoin treasury. The last case restores the starting ratio, but says nothing about the cost of acquiring those extra coins. Treasury per share is one comparison, not a share-price target.

Direct bitcoin removes corporate execution and dilution from the exposure, but leaves price volatility and custody or intermediary risk. A listed miner fits an equity brokerage account and carries public-company reporting, but can underperform bitcoin or fail. Compare debt maturities, share count, cost definitions and capital needs before treating either exposure as a substitute for the other.

The SEC explains stock ownership and creditor priority; Bitcoin.org explains custody and price risks.

Work it for any miner in four steps.

1. Find the cost per bitcoin in the 10-Q or results release for the quarter you are reading, and note whether it is the direct figure, one with depreciation, or both. The cost brief lists which companies publish which.
2. Find the revenue per bitcoin mined, or the production value per bitcoin, for the same period. If the filing does not state one, the ratio cannot be built from that filing; do not borrow a price from another date.
3. Subtract. The result is the margin per coin on that basis. Divide the cost by the revenue: the closer to 1, the more the margin moves for a given move in the price.
4. Ask what would cover the figure with depreciation: that cost is the revenue per coin that does it, and the gap between that and the filed revenue is how far the price would have to move.