Riot Platforms announced earnings on Thursday, notching its highest quarterly revenue and squeezing past Wall Street estimates. Although bitcoin miners faced challenges in the first quarter, Riot remains optimistic, with ongoing expansion happening at its Corsicana Facility.
The bitcoin miner reported quarterly revenue of $161.4 million in Q1, beating estimates by about 1%. It’s a gain of approximately 50% compared to the same period last year. It’s also the highest quarterly revenue yet for the company. That said, bitcoin halving last year sent mining costs soarin,g and the company notched a net loss for the quarter overall. It noted higher mining costs and a 41% increase in global hash rates between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025 as the reasons for increased costs.
Despite recent challenges, Riot continues to expand its Corsicana Facility, as well as building out other components of the business. “During the first quarter of 2025, Riot continued to make significant progress on the development of our AI/HPC data center business,” said Jason Les, CEO of Riot, in the press release.
“Construction work on the substation [at Corsicana], to be completed in early 2026, also continues and will bring a total of 1.0 GW of power capacity online once completed. I am extremely pleased with the progress we have already made on this front and look forward to announcing continued progress in the coming months.”
Riot currently holds 19,223 in unencumbered bitcoin. That translates to a market value of approximately $1.6 billion based on March 31, 2025 bitcoin prices. The company also maintains $310.3 million in working capital, with $163.7 in unrestricted cash as of Q1.
Invest in Riot and Bitcoin Miners With WGMI
Investors who want to harness the potential in bitcoin but prefer the familiarity of equities would do well to consider the CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI). The actively managed fund offers pure-play exposure to bitcoin miners in North America. Riot platforms is currently the fourth largest holding in the fund, at an 8.44% weight as of May 2, 2025.
WGMI invests in companies who earn at least half their profits or revenue from bitcoin mining but does not invest in bitcoin. The fund invests in those companies providing hardware, software or services to bitcoin mining companies. Additionally, the strategy seeks companies that manufacture specialized chips used in bitcoin mining.
Bitcoin mining entails running mining computer rigs with specialized programs. These rigs use intense computations to validate transactions on the bitcoin network. As miners validate transactions and solve computations, they create new blocks for the blockchain. In return, they’re rewarded with newly minted bitcoin cryptocurrency as well as transaction fees.
Bitcoin has a finite amount of supply (21 million), with halving events approximately every four years. The most recent occurred in April 2024. Each halving reduces the amount of bitcoin paid for creation of new blocks, cutting supply in half. This means that over time, bitcoin miners will earn less for mining. Instead, they’ll rely more on transaction fees earned for their efforts.
WGMI is managed by a team of industry experts on both cryptocurrencies as well as the finance sector. The strategy utilizes this expertise when seeking bitcoin mining companies and those in related industries. Investors are able to harness the fund manager’s knowledge of the technical, operational, and commercial workings of the bitcoin mining industry when investing in the fund.
WGMI carries an expense ratio of 0.75%.
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