In 2025, the market sent a clear message: it wants the power, the chips, and the anonymity.
Here is the breakdown of the winners and losers from a year that defied correlation.
The winners
AI demand swallowed global energy capacity, and some crypto miners and infrastructure firms that successfully pivoted to High-Performance Computing (HPC) or secured nuclear power deals saw vertical gains.
ZCSH (Grayscale Zcash Trust) is the surprise outlier of the year. The trust product decoupled entirely from the altcoin market and posted monstrous gains. It stands alone as the top performer in the digital asset space.
The energy crisis drove investors into anything nuclear. BW (Babcock & Wilcox) surged +282%, while LEU (Centrus Energy) gained +270% and Sam Altman-backed OKLO climbed +238%. The market realized that you need baseload power whether you are mining blocks or training LLMs.
Miners who diversified away from pure SHA-256 hashing into AI computing were rewarded handsomely. IREN (Iris Energy) jumped 280%, followed by APLD (Applied Digital) at 215% and NBIS (Nebius Group) at 207%. Investors no longer view these as merely “crypto stocks.”
HOOD (Robinhood) posted a +210% gain. It remains the ultimate retail gateway for both equities and crypto.
The losers
If you weren’t pivoting to AI or securing nuclear reactors, 2025 was a bloodbath. The market showed zero mercy to inefficient miners and speculative vehicles.
ARBK (Argo Blockchain) obliterated shareholder value, dropping 97%. Similarly, GPUS (Hyperscale Data) fell 96% and CAN (Canaan) dropped 65%. The halving and stagnant BTC prices made pure-play mining a losing game for those with high energy costs.
High-beta plays that usually act as leveraged Bitcoin proxies also collapsed. MSTR (MicroStrategy) felt the gravity of its premium unwinding and collapsed by nearly 50%.
The retail gambling mania evaporated. The Memecoin Index plummeted 72%. This left the bagholders of 2024’s favorite dog and cat coins with pennies on the dollar.
Gold vs. digital gold
The most “traditional” asset proved to be the best hedge. Gold crushed all major indices with a +65% return, leaving the Nasdaq (+21%) and Bitcoin (-6%) in the dust.
It remains to be seen whether crypto will be able to catch up with gold in 2026.
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