Matt Siegel, head of research at VanEck, gave the Fort Lauderdale audience one number to explain how he picks Bitcoin mining stocks. In the last cycle, he said, the average mining stock fell 94% from peak to trough, and a number of companies went bankrupt because they had levered up. His conclusion was simple: he backs management teams that steer clear of debt.
Siegel spoke on the IPO 101 for Bitcoin Miners panel at Mining Disrupt Fort Lauderdale 2025, recorded March 25–27, 2025. The session was hosted by Power Mining Analysis, which describes itself as an online data platform for public Bitcoin miners; its CEO, Anthony Power, sat on the panel alongside Ruben Sahakyan, Managing Director & Co-Head of Digital Assets at Stifel KBW, and Kevin Deedy, a research analyst at H.C. Wainwright. The question put to them was what analysts look for in a publicly traded miner. When the panel met, Bitcoin traded at $87,393.
Who Was on the Stage
Each panelist came at the sector from a different side. Deedy said he was the first U.S. sell-side analyst to publish on the sector, starting with Riot in 2018, and the first to cover Marathon. Siegel described VanEck as a family-owned asset manager based in New York with about $120 billion in assets, whose roots are in gold and gold mining stocks; the firm began investing in Bitcoin from its own balance sheet eight years earlier and now runs an equity ETF that makes it a top-10 shareholder in the public miners. Sahakyan said Stifel KBW provides cradle-to-grave services for companies raising capital. Power said he served as a soldier for 25 years and is a qualified chartered accountant.
Energy: The Biggest Cost Doubles Every Halving
Power opened on energy, which he called the miners' biggest cost. His point was arithmetic: every halving cuts revenue per unit of hashrate, so the share of revenue spent on power doubles.
The revenue doesn't double, the revenue reduces, but the energy cost doubles effectively.
Anthony Power · 8:25
He used IREN as his example of a miner with "the best of both worlds": close to the cheapest energy in Texas, bought at the market rate rather than through a power purchase agreement, used when it makes sense to mine, and paired with the most efficient mining fleet. He also noted that miners have looked beyond North America to Paraguay, Iceland and Sweden, and that some of those places now bring their own problems; in Iceland, he said, he was not sure the government was fully in favor of Bitcoin mining.
His most unusual case was Abu Dhabi, where Marathon set up a joint venture. A hot country that runs on air conditioning during the day, he explained, has power to spare at night, and that is when mining runs. He added that miners are also moving into wind farms, citing Marathon's purchase of one.
Flexibility and the Missing Moat
Deedy said the sector had been transformational over the previous 12 months. He called Bitcoin mining good for developing renewable energy and for supporting the grid, but said public companies have to answer to their constituents with money, which is hard in a business this capital intensive. For him, the most important quality was management's flexibility.
Siegel said few sectors are harder for an analyst, because mining is a capital-intensive commodity business. An equity investor wants profitability, growth and a sustainable competitive advantage, he said, and by definition a Bitcoin miner has no moat. A company can build one through access to ASICs, through cheap energy, or through a team that moves faster than its peers.
Why Debt Is the Red Flag
Well, having lived through a couple cycles now, I look for management teams that are allergic to debt.
Matt Siegel · 18:36
Such teams are hard to find in this sector, he said. VanEck wants bootstrapped companies that can reinvest their own capital profitably. Management teams sometimes borrow to buy Bitcoin in the hope of a premium on their stock, but Siegel said he can execute that strategy himself and does not need a miner to do it for him.
But the average peak to trough decline in the mining stocks last cycle was 94%.
Matt Siegel · 18:49
Why Miners Move Their Headquarters to the U.S.
The moderator noted that many miners had redomiciled to the United States, HIVE among them. Sahakyan explained the chain of reasoning. Companies list in the U.S. for access to deep, liquid capital; to reach it, they need to be in the indices, and to be included in the indices they need to be domiciled in the U.S. Index inclusion brings passive money from ETFs, such as funds that track the Russell 2000, and with it more liquidity and volatility, which in turn makes it easier to raise capital.
He said it was not black and white: a U.S. company comes under SEC supervision and higher reporting costs. Still, he said the change in administration had shifted the picture quickly.
Two months ago, people might be going to jail.
Ruben Sahakyan · 25:36
The HPC Pivot and the Cost of Capital
Asked about miners moving into high-performance computing and AI, Siegel said VanEck had been very supportive of the pivots. In a valuation model, he said, the discount rate makes most of the difference, and an HPC data center company carries a much lower cost of capital than a miner.
The reason is that the single biggest variable in a company's stock price is their cost of capital.
Matt Siegel · 28:19
The panel's closing remarks added a caution. Bitcoin mining is not going away, the speaker said, and not every site can address HPC. Inference will draw a lot of power near metropolitan areas, but building a large HPC site needs assured access to capital and a long stream of revenue. The final advice for Bitcoin miners was minimal debt, minimal dilution, a clear communication strategy from the CEO, and an edge that management keeps reminding investors about.
Bitcoin traded at $87,393 when the panel met and at $82,328 on October 19, 2026. Intelligence Disrupt 2027 runs March 22–24 in Irving, Texas.