Publicly traded Bitcoin miners have been riding a wave after pivoting to AI infrastructure. But now investors are asking a tougher question — did insiders cash out before the sector cooled?
Blocksbridge Consulting’s latest Miner Weekly newsletter flags a growing governance concern. The AI narrative lifted valuations for several mining companies as they repositioned around data centers and power infrastructure. But sentiment has weakened. The TEM AI Infrastructure Growth Index, which tracks miners, AI cloud providers, and power suppliers, is down 16% over the past month.
That pullback has put insider transactions under the microscope.
Executives at TeraWulf, Cipher Digital, Riot Platforms, and Core Scientific have all disclosed stock sales — many via prearranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plans. Those plans are standard practice, designed to avoid conflicts with nonpublic information. But they’re drawing more attention now that AI-related stocks have retreated.
It’s not just company executives. Strategic investors have been trimming too. Tether, the stablecoin issuer, reduced its stake in Bitdeer after the company’s AI-driven rebound.
Blocksbridge points to TeraWulf as the clearest example. CEO Paul Prager and his entity Beowulf E&D Holdings sold roughly 1.59 million WULF shares before the company announced a major 20-year AI infrastructure lease with Anthropic — a deal widely seen as validating its AI strategy.
The bigger question: will the benefits of this tech transition actually flow to public shareholders? Investors are shifting focus from the AI growth story to governance and shareholder alignment.
Meanwhile, AI spending continues to ramp up despite uncertain returns. Deloitte described AI as a “paradox of rising investment and elusive returns.” A Teneo survey of over 350 public company CEOs found fewer than half of AI initiatives have delivered returns above cost.
Bitcoin miners are betting that long-term demand for compute capacity will outweigh those near-term concerns. They’ve got the power infrastructure and the sites. But investors want to know who’s getting paid first.
