Bernstein Lowers 2025 Forecasts for Bitcoin Miners’ Stocks

Analysts at Bernstein have reduced their target prices for the stocks of miners IREN, CleanSpark, and Riot Platforms for 2025. This was reported by The Block, citing the company’s report.

“This year, bitcoin miners have experienced a painful correction (20–40%), while the cryptocurrency fell by 10%,” stated analysts led by Gautam Chhugani.

Overall, the miners’ stocks “did not significantly participate” in the rise of digital gold at the end of 2024 and showed poorer performance at the beginning of this year, the experts noted.

Institutional interest in the sector was focused on AI/HPC narratives rather than bitcoin production. However, in 2025, those who diversified their data centers the most, like IREN and Core Scientific, performed worse than “pure” miners such as Riot and MARA.

Analysts lowered the target price forecasts for the following companies:

• IREN — from $26 to $20. The global hash rate growth negatively impacts the company’s cryptocurrency production rate and market share. It also faces cash outflows due to capital expenditures on expanding mining operations;
• CleanSpark — from $30 to $20. Alongside increasing cryptocurrency mining difficulty, the firm is experiencing reduced cash flows due to a shift towards a bitcoin accumulation strategy;
• Riot — from $22 to $19. Significant resource reallocation by the company towards AI/HPC halts plans to expand mining capacities and directly affects revenue prospects.

Bernstein maintained the price targets for MARA and Core Scientific unchanged at $23 and $17, respectively.

Analysts cited high-budget energy contracts of Core with AI firm CoreWeave, as well as MARA’s profit from the fair value revaluation of its bitcoin reserve of 46,374 BTC ($3.95 billion).

Back in February, Bernstein specialists predicted a new bull market phase for the leading cryptocurrency. Key catalysts will be initiatives from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.