Bitcoin was no exception to Monday's broad market rout, which gives investors a good buying opportunity, according to analysts. The flagship cryptocurrency dropped 11% over the three days ending Monday, according to Coin Metrics, pulling down the performance of stocks related to it. Those names managed to recoup some of their losses on Tuesday.
"As a reminder, Bitcoin historically has very strong returns in the one-year period post halving," Brett Knoblauch, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, said in a note Monday. He also noted that bitcoin is down 10% since the April 19 halving . "With institutional adoption only increasing and political winds shifting to be a potential tailwind from a historical headwind, we believe this is an opportune time to add exposure to bitcoin ahead of what could be outsized returns over the coming year," Knoblauch wrote.
That could be through exposure to bitcoin miners, which are now approaching breakeven levels of $50,000 with the cryptocurrency at $55,000. Cantor has overweight ratings on eight mining stocks, including Riot Platforms , CleanSpark , Iris Energy , Core Scientific and Cipher Mining . Knoblauch said Riot Platforms, one of the largest of the mining stocks, has the best liquidity and one of the cheapest all-in costs to mine bitcoin.
He has a $23 price target on the stock, which closed at $8.31 Monday. "The longer bitcoin is down at these levels, the tougher it is for more sub-scale miners to compete, putting RIOT in prime position to consolidate the space," he added.
IREN, formerly known as Iris Energy, also has very cheap all-in costs to mine, according to Knoblauch. It's down 15% in the past week. "We still believe IREN can be real in the AI/HPC space, thus, this is a very attractive buying opportunity in what we think is an oversold name," he said.
He also highlighted Core Scientific, which has been the subject of a lot of buzz in crypto after turning down an offer from the cloud AI startup CoreWeave to acquire them for $5.75 per share. Knoblauch said he believes that bid is higher now and that the deal will be "meaningfully upsized" in the coming months.
Cantor has a $20 price target on the stock, implying about 143% upside. —CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting..
