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When it comes to publicly traded Bitcoin seem to be the names that investors are most likely to be familiar with.
Even more exciting is that Core Scientific is keeping its foot on the gas, and is on pace to mine significantly more tokens in 2022.
And Terawulf, which went public via a SPAC merger in December at a valuation of just over $1 billion, has not yet mined any Bitcoin.
While people often think of Bitcoin mining as a commodity industry, Core Scientific has several differentiators that make it stand out, even beyond its impressive mining performance to date.
For example, it has dabbled in staking other cryptocurrencies, which is interesting, though that effort has yet to become a material contributor to its financial results.
Unlike many recent SPAC companies, Core Scientific is actually profitable on an EBITDA basis, and it trades at a reasonable forward price-to-earnings ratio of 12.
Secondly, the price of Bitcoin declined sharply in early 2022, which led investors to sell off crypto miners.
Lastly, Core Scientific’s board decided to end the 180-day lockup period on a large fraction of the company’s shares early — a decision that was received poorly by the market.
In sum, I think that most of the reasons that Core Scientific shares have slid are temporary in nature, and that long term, the company is building a best-in-class Bitcoin mining operation with some interesting other services and technologies that may become meaningful over time.