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Luke Kawa4/21/25

Bitcoin’s divorce from US tech stocks another damning sign of the “sell America” trade

It turns out Tyler Winklevoss wasn’t wrong. He was just early.

On the weekend following Liberation Day, the Gemini cofounder said that bitcoin’s resilience following an end-of-week meltdown in US stocks in response to Liberation Day indicated that bitcoin was “now behaving like a hedge to geopolitical uncertainty.”

The crypto asset promptly fell out of bed shortly following his remarks (womp womp!). But fast-forward a couple weeks and, well, you gotta hand it to him. Bitcoin has often behaved like a hyper-correlated, leveraged play on US tech stocks and recently, it hasn’t been trading like a US risk asset. It’s been trading without the taint of being associated with America — a characteristic that’s been damning for US stocks, government bonds, and the greenback.

Bitcoin’s has been an excellent store of value since April 2 (the last trading day prior to President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs announcement in the Rose Garden). The digital currency is up about 2% over this time while the Nasdaq 100 is down nearly 9%. Not as good as gold, to be sure, but way better than the US dollar or long-term Treasury bonds, that’s for sure.

Most of the divergence is fairly recent, occurring in the past couple trading days as the “sell America” theme in financial markets has gone viral.

It’s a troubling sign, from the perspective of an owner of US assets, that the desire to sell America and own not-America appears to be playing a dominant role in driving price action across financial markets, overwhelming bitcoin’s traditional solid relationship with US tech stocks.

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CleanSpark drops after Q2 results trail estimates, with much deeper-than-expected quarterly loss

Shares of CleanSpark are down in postmarket trading after the bitcoin miner and data center developer reported its second-quarter earnings on Monday, missing Wall Street estimates on the top and bottom lines.

CleanSpark reported:

$136.4 million in revenue (compared to analysts’ consensus estimate of $139.4 million).
An adjusted loss per share of $1.52 (estimate: a $0.66 loss).

Those numbers show revenue down 24.9% year over year.

Like TeraWulf, which reported earnings on Friday, and many, many others, CleanSpark is transitioning from a solely bitcoin mining company to a broader AI infrastructure provider. The company is up 53% over the past year.

In its press release Monday, the company said it roughly doubled its megawatts under contract year over year. Per Matt Schultz, CEO and chairman of CleanSpark:

“Our objectives are clear: commercialize our AI/HPC-applicable assets, grow the portfolio, and continue mining efficiently to power CleanSpark’s transformation.”

According to exchange data, CleanSpark is among the Russell 3000 companies that traders love to hate, with roughly 35% of its float sold short as of mid-April. That’s one reason, besides the bitcoin/AI crossover, that the name is on the dashboard of many retail traders.

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Sage D. Young39m

MARA dips after missing earnings expectations

Bitcoin miner and data center operator MARA Holdings released its Q1 earnings report Monday afternoon, missing analysts’ expectations on revenue and earnings per share. Shares dropped in after-hours trading, giving back gains built on Monday’s session.

The company reported:

Revenue of $174.6 million, below the FactSet analyst consensus estimate of $181.9 million and an 18% decline from $213.9 million in the same period last year.
A net loss of $1.3 billion, or a $3.31 loss per diluted share, compared to the $1.55 loss per share in Q1 2025.

The jump in the company’s net loss was “primarily driven by a $520.4 million increase in operating loss, largely due to unfavorable bitcoin mark-to-market adjustments of ($1.0 billion) and restructuring costs of $45.9 million during the quarter,” MARA CFO Salman Khan said in the firm’s Q1 2026 shareholder letter.

MARA Holdings has the fourth-largest bitcoin treasury and, similar to other mining companies, has made a push to develop infrastructure to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom. Last month, the company announced acquiring Long Ridge Energy & Power LLC for $1.5 billion to add over 1 gigawatt of total potential power capacity.

“We expect Long Ridge will continue to supply power to the grid and generate cash flow and positive EBITDA upon closing,” MARA Chairman and CEO Fred Thiel said in a statement. “Our intention is to develop incremental capacity at the site and build a higher value digital infrastructure asset.”

Rigetti Computing posts better-than-expected Q1 sales

The superconducting quantum computing company just released quarterly results.

“Euro-Q-Exa" quantum computer

markets

Max Knoblauch56m

Air taxi maker Archer reports narrower-than-expected Q1 loss, expects operations in US cities to begin this year

Air taxi maker Archer Aviation reported its first-quarter earnings after markets closed on Monday afternoon. The company’s shares climbed over 4% in after-hours trading.

For its first quarter, Archer reported:

An adjusted operating loss of $172.5 million, in line with Wall Street estimates of a $173 million loss. Archer had forecast a loss of between $160 million and $180 million for the quarter.
A loss of $0.28 per share, compared to the $0.31 loss per share analysts polled by FactSet had predicted.
$1.78 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, down about 10% from Q4 2025. Archer’s rival, Joby Aviation, ended Q1 with $2.5 billion.

For the second quarter, Archer guided for a loss of between $170 million and $200 million, with a midpoint deeper than Wall Street’s $177.7 million loss estimate.

Earlier this month, Archer announced it had secured an “established pathway for Archer to begin limited commercial operations” in the UAE, though it didn’t give a timeline. Archer shares are down more than 13% year to date and more than 50% from a high last October.

“Archer expects Midnight operations in American cities to begin this year through the White House’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) and as part of its preparation to serve as the Official Air Taxi Provider of the LA28 Olympic Games, in coordination with the US Department of Transportation and FAA,” read the company’s shareholder letter.

Plug Power jumps after Q1 revenues surprise to the upside

Plug Power just released Q1 results.

Plug Power

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