Hut 8 Craters 11% Despite a $19.6B Beacon Point Backlog, TeraWulf Falls 5%, IREN Drops 3%: What’s Pressuring These AI Miner Stocks?

Friday’s selling in AI-pivoting Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) miners tracks their 2026 gains almost perfectly, a signature of profit-taking and position unwinding rather than a reassessment of any company’s contracts or economics. Hut 8 (NASDAQ:HUT) stock is down 11% to $78.54 in Friday morning trading, the group’s worst decliner despite carrying the largest signed AI data center backlog among former miners. There’s no same-day announcement behind the move.

Meanwhile, TeraWulf (NASDAQ:WULF) stock is sliding 5% to $15.58, a more moderate drop mirroring its smaller year-to-date advance. Also lower, IREN (NASDAQ:IREN) stock is falling 3% to $41.20, the mildest decline and consistent with its slimmer 2026 gain.

At the same time, the Global X Data Center and Digital Infrastructure ETF (NASDAQ:DTCR) is down 0.6% to $28.30, barely moving relative to the miners inside the broader theme. That gap tells the story: broad demand for AI data center capacity isn’t what traders are selling this morning.

Selling Tracks the Year’s Biggest Winners

Rank the three miners by 2026 performance and by Friday’s loss and the order is identical. Hut 8 stock is up 93% year to date through Thursday’s close and down the most today. TeraWulf stock is up 43% year to date through Thursday’s close, and its Friday drop is smaller. IREN stock is up 13% year to date through Thursday’s close, and its decline is the shallowest.

That proportionality signals profit-taking, not a re-underwriting of long-duration contracts or unit economics. What’s being unwound is the specific bet that former Bitcoin miners can convert scarce power and shell space into AI tenancy, a bet that repriced violently upward earlier this year.

Full-chain options positioning still leans bullish across the group, with Hut 8’s put-call ratio at 0.45, TeraWulf’s at 0.37, and IREN’s at 0.34. Traders sitting on sizable call exposure have every incentive to trim as the year’s gains compress.

Beacon Point Backlog Sits Behind the Story

Hut 8’s backlog isn’t Friday news, but it frames why the stock has run so far and why it’s giving back the most today. On May 6, Hut 8 commercialized the first phase of its 1 gigawatt Beacon Point AI data center campus in Texas with a 15-year, 352 megawatt IT lease carrying a base-term contract value of $9.8 billion. By July 20, the company had fully commercialized the campus with a second 352 megawatt IT lease, bringing campus-level base-term contract value to $19.6 billion.

Both milestones predate this session. During the August 4 call, Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot noted that total contracted AI data center capacity across Beacon Point and River Bend is roughly 949 megawatts, representing approximately $26.6 billion of expected aggregate base-term contract value. Initial data hall delivery is targeted for Q2 2027 at River Bend and Q3 2027 at Beacon Point, so none of that contracted revenue has hit the income statement yet.

Data Center Fund Barely Budges

The Global X ETF’s muted move is the cleanest evidence that broader AI infrastructure demand isn’t being repriced today. It was up 35% year to date through Thursday’s close, so it has participated in the theme, but Friday’s drop is tiny relative to the miners. Its portfolio leans toward established data center REITs and communications tower operators, with the top three positions each accounting for more than 9% of net assets.

DTCR shares are holding up far better than the miners inside the theme. That divergence points to a rotation out of the highest-beta corner of the AI infrastructure trade rather than a sector-wide reassessment of demand (we profiled seven suppliers powering the buildout, from power to cooling, in a free report).

What to Watch Next

The central question for Hut 8 shareholders is whether Beacon Point’s contracted revenue begins converting into reported results, since the backlog is signed and dated but the cash hasn’t yet shown up in the numbers. Reported Q2 2026 revenue of $74.93 million still reflects mostly compute activity, not the AI lease stream anchoring the equity story.

Investors sizing exposure to this group may want to keep positions moderate given how proportional Friday’s selling is to prior gains. Hut 8 stock dropping 11% against a 0.6% move in DTCR shares underscores the single-stock risk in this pocket. A cautious weighting, paired with attention to the next Hut 8 quarterly report for the first Beacon Point revenue signals, remains the sensible stance.

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