VanEck’s Matthew Sigel outlines Bitcoin miners’ AI valuation framework
The new framework reveals a massive gap between miners with contracted AI capacity and those still building pipelines, pointing to a $37.6 billion opportunity.
Bitcoin miners are no longer just Bitcoin miners. Matthew Sigel, Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, laid out a valuation framework that makes the pecking order brutally clear. Companies with leased or colocation-backed facilities are trading above 10x EV/EBITDA. Pipeline-stage companies, meaning those still developing their infrastructure, are stuck in the 2-6x range.
The numbers behind the divide
WULF, with 430 megawatts of contracted colocation capacity, is commanding a valuation of roughly 24.2x EV/EBITDA. CIFR, sitting on 300 MW of interconnection initiatives, comes in at about 19.9x. RIOT, with 600 MW of remaining capacity, trades at 15.6x.
The miners that have pivoted toward AI and HPC partnerships, like WULF and CORZ, are outperforming traditional Bitcoin miners on a year-to-date basis. Multi-year contracts with AI customers produce predictable cash flows. Bitcoin mining revenues, by contrast, swing with hash rate, difficulty adjustments, and a coin price that can move 20% in a week.
The arbitrage hiding in plain sight
Public miners are currently valued at around $3 million per megawatt. Private data-center deals, on the other hand, are closing at roughly $8 million per MW. VanEck estimates the net present value upside from this kind of strategic pivot across the sector at approximately $37.6 billion.
What this means for investors
The 10x-plus multiples for leased companies versus 2-6x for pipeline companies suggest the market is already applying heavy discounts to development-stage capacity. A signed lease with a creditworthy counterparty is a very different thing than a press release about future plans, meaning there is significant upside for any pipeline company that successfully converts announced capacity into actual contracts.
The risk is that not every miner successfully makes the transition. AI customers demand uptime guarantees, redundancy, and cooling specifications that Bitcoin mining facilities weren’t always built to meet. Investors should watch for actual contract announcements and energized capacity milestones rather than taking pipeline figures at face value.