Cryptocurrency Mining has existed ever since Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block of Bitcoin back in 2009. Since then, the cryptocurrency mining industry has grown several times over with miners all over the world setting up mining farms to capitalize on this phenomenal growth that cryptocurrencies have seen over the past decade, especially over the last couple of years.
Crypto mining stocks are often correlated with the prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum as they are fundamentals on which the stock price could be based in addition to the company’s fundamentals.
It is often noticed that crypto mining stocks rise along with the flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and also plummet alongside it when a market dip comes into play. In the recent past, it’s seen that bitcoin mining difficulty is at a record high in 2021 with miner’s revenues continuously rising at the same time.
Although, there are now energy consumption concerns rearing their head in mainstream media, but all 70% of the miners are based in China, the fundamental data available on the same isn’t enough to accurately come to a conclusion about Bitcoin’s energy consumption and its impact on the environment.
Despite these concerns, crypto mining stocks have been performing well due to the mainstream proliferation of digital currencies. Here we list the top crypto mining projects that could be a great value addition to an investor’s portfolio:
RIOT Blockchain
Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ:RIOT) is a company which focuses on Bitcoin mining and aims to be one of the largest and low cost producers of bitcoin in North America. Riot blockchain has been the talk of the town within investor circles ever since the start of this year.
In March of 2020, Riot Blockchain was trading at 65 cents. These days, its trading at around $62 — such growth is unprecedented in the financial markets in such a short time and is clearly indicative of the pace this company and the industry as a whole is growing at. The firm currently has a market capitalization of $4.24 billion.
Pylon Finance
Pylon Finance is a Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) mining project for the Ethereum blockchain. It was created by owners of the largest Ether mining operation in the United States, with more than 6 years of mining experience. Pylon Finance is different from the other companies on this list as they are the only mining operation that offers a product one can invest in through Decentralized Finance, aka DeFi.
Pylon has successfully launched more than nine DeFi farming projects before launching their vault. Pylon’s GPU vault was seeded with $1,000,000 raised through a word of mouth campaign that is a dividend to all users.
Rewards begin immediately upon staking and APY is updated every 7 days depending on Ethereum’s current rate along with the most current hashrate difficulties. Considering that just in January 2021 alone, Ethereum miners earned $830 million in revenue. As a result, PYLON, the native token of Pylon Finance, is generating an annual percentage yield (APY) up to 250%.
Pylon establishes a GPU mining asset that is semi correlated with the crypto market as a whole. The advantage of it being semi correlated is that in addition to being subject to the whims of the DeFi marketplace for staking and loans, the value is mainly dependent on the value of the underlying mining operation, which is ever-increasing.
Thus, even in bear markets, PYLON is expected to hold on to its value much stronger than the DeFi markets, and the volatile crypto markets as a whole. PYLON is a 100% community-mined token with no presale or pre-mine, and fixed supply of approximately 7,700 total tokens.
PYLON is an avenue for the average crypto user to invest in a crowdsourced project that focuses on GPU mining, which is typically difficult for many to access due to startup capital required, cost of operation, knowledge base, etc. This is what makes Pylon a unique value add to an investor’s portfolio.
Canaan Creative
Canaan Creative is a computer hardware manufacturer based in China. They focus on blockchain servers and application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) that are used in bitcoin mining. They raised $90 million in their Initial Public Offering (IPO) in November 2019; they were listed on Nasdaq thereafter.
Canaan is currently trading near its all-time high of $39.10 and might go ahead to break this high if bitcoin continues to rally further, breaking into new territory. It currently has a market capitalization of $5.42 billion and is continuously rising especially with the increasing interest in the space.
Marathon Digital Holdings
Marathon Digital Holdings, previously known as Marathon Patent Group, is the parent company of the Uniloc Corporation which is the patent assertion company. But now, with the change in industry norms, they are now known for its purchases of bitcoin mining equipment and bitcoin, itself thus explaining the change in name as well.
Earlier in January, the company even bought $150 million worth of Bitcoin at the time after which Bitcoin’s value has appreciated significantly thus, the company has made huge profit on their balance sheet due to this purchase. They are in contention with Riot Blockchain to be America’s largest Bitcoin miner.
Due to these purchases and mining equipment installations, its stock price has seen enormous growth. The stock was trading in the sub $0.5 range last year in March. Fast forward one year, the stock is currently trading in the $40 range, indicating exponential stock usually unheard of the financial markets. With the price of bitcoin currently flirting with its previous all time high, it’s still not late for investors to ride the crypto mining wave considering the nascent stage that Bitcoin adoption is at right now and the limitless potential it promises.
This article first published on coinquora.com