MARA, CleanSpark Avoided The AI Hype—And That's Their Superpower

In a market where every crypto firm wants to slap ‘AI’ on its investor deck, two Bitcoin BTC/USD miners are winning by doing the exact opposite.

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CleanSpark Inc CLSK and MARA Holdings Inc MARA, formerly known as Marathon Digital, received a bullish nod from JPMorgan. The investment bank’s analysts upgraded MARA to Overweight and reiterated CleanSpark as its top pick.

Why? Both companies stayed focused on their core business—mining Bitcoin. Their rivals, meanwhile, chased high-performance computing (HPC) dreams with uncertain timelines and even hazier economics.

Read Also: Ray Dalio Says 15% In Bitcoin Or Gold May Be Essential As Fiat Currencies Face Devaluation Risks

When AI Hype Fizzles, Fundamentals Shine

Analyst Reginald L. Smith writes that CleanSpark and Marathon now offer the "best relative value" among JPMorgan's crypto mining coverage. In contrast, formerly favored names like Riot Platforms Inc RIOT and IREN Ltd IREN (formerly known as Iris Energy) were downgraded, not due to poor execution, but because their valuations look stretched—and too dependent on unannounced AI or HPC deals.

With Bitcoin roaring and network hashrates stabilizing, miners producing coins efficiently—not theorizing about AI workloads—are positioned to benefit first.

Miners That Mine—What A Concept

MARA is aiming for a massive 75 EH/s hashrate by year-end 2025. According to JPMorgan, the market hasn't fully priced that in. Meanwhile, CleanSpark continues to scale quietly, without pivoting to AI theater, and is now considered best-in-class for cost efficiency.

In short: the more a miner sounds like an HPC sales pitch, the less compelling it looks to Wall Street right now.

Investors may finally be asking: who's generating actual revenue from bitcoin, and who's just generating buzzwords? For now, it seems the miners who didn't try to reinvent themselves as AI companies are the ones worth watching.

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