Equities update | December 29th 2025
3 min read
- Finance
- Data
The final week of 2025 saw reduced trading volumes, with a modest “Santa rally” emerging across broader equity indices. However, with Bitcoin remaining largely range-bound, crypto equities, most notably Bitcoin treasury companies, failed to participate in the rally. In contrast, Bitcoin miners outperformed, benefiting from renewed relief in the AI and data-centre trade, supported by positive developments such as Hut 8’s deal with Fluidstack and Cipher Mining’s site acquisition outside of Texas. These developments reinforce our view that HPC demand remains resilient, with companies continuing to expand data-centre operations despite ongoing volatility in AI-related equities heading into 2026. Beyond miners, financial services firms continued to broaden their crypto offerings, positioning 2026 as a year of customer acquisition and product expansion, following 2025’s role as the foundational build-out phase for crypto and blockchain infrastructure.
Week 51 Key Developments in Blockchain Equities
Index Performance: The Index rose 2.1% during a shortened holiday trading week, as markets digested several key macroeconomic releases. Q3 US core PCE came in line at 2.9%, reinforcing signs of sticky inflation, while weekly jobless claims remained low, pointing to continued labour-market resilience. Meanwhile, Q3 GDP surprised to the upside at 4.3% versus a 3.3% forecast, driven primarily by strength in healthcare and recreational goods and vehicles. Taken together, these data points suggest that a January rate cut could be increasingly unlikely.
Block Index Key Movers: 7-day top performers: Hut-8 (+31.5%), Iris Energy (+24.3%), Bitfarms (+15.1%) 7-day worst performers: Defi Technologies (-25.5%), CoinShares (-7.4%), Block Inc (4.4%)
Index constituent Strategy Inc (formerly MicroStrategy) increases its cash reserve to US$2.19bn – This week, Strategy issued 4.54m shares of its Class A common stock, raising US$747.8m in cash to bolster its reserves and fund ongoing dividend payments. The raise comes at a time when its mNAV (market capitalisation relative to Bitcoin holdings) is trading at a discount of approximately 0.85×, amid market concerns that the company could be forced to liquidate Bitcoin to support dividends during the broader correction in Bitcoin prices. Despite raising cash at an arguably inopportune time, the cash reserve now covers dividend payments for approximately 2.6 years potentially alleviating market fears of forced Bitcoin sales and potentially put a floor under further mNAV depreciation. However, with lower Bitcoin prices over the past months, Strategy is stuck between a rock and a hard place: they need to show that they have the ability to buy Bitcoin at lower prices, but that comes at a cost of either issuing equity at a discount or preferred stock which raises dividend commitments.
Cipher Mining expands outside of Texas and into Ohio for the first time – Index constituent Cipher Mining announced the acquisition of a data center site in Ohio, consisting of a 200MW facility suitable for HPC. This marks the company’s entry into the PJM power market with energisation expected to be completed in Q4 2027. With this acquisition, Cipher now operates eight sites and has a total power portfolio of approximately 3.4GW, the majority of which is expected to be allocated to AI and HPC workloads over time. Bitcoin miners ended the week higher as the data-centre theme saw some relief, with Hut 8 outperforming following its 15-year, US$7bn, 245MW contract with Fluidstack backed by Google, a structure similar to both TeraWulf and Cipher Mining.
Other news: Index constituent Coinbase announced its acquisition of The Clearing Company, marking its seventh acquisition of the year and reinforcing its ambition to become an “Everything Exchange.” The deal is expected to accelerate Coinbase’s push into on-platform prediction markets, expanding its derivatives and event-based trading capabilities. SoFi Technologies launches SoFiUSD, a fully reserved U.S. Dollar Stablecoin Issued by SoFI Bank. JPMorgan Chase is reportedly exploring crypto trading services for institutional clients.
