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Riot stock tumbles after bitcoin production decreases

Bitcoin mining and digital infrastructure company Riot Platforms is tumbling this morning, dropping as much as 8% before recovering to about 5% down as of 10:50 a.m. ET. Meanwhile, bitcoin is somewhat stable, hovering around $91,000, as the crypto industry is in a wait-and-see mode until tomorrow’s inaugural White House Crypto Summit.

Riot released fourth-quarter and full-year financial earnings on February 24. The company’s results exceeded expectations, primarily due to bitcoin mining revenue, but it didn’t lift the stock. On March 4, the company said its bitcoin production declined month over month, mining 470 bitcoin in February vs. 527 in January.

Production was “impacted by planned maintenance, elevated curtailment driven by higher power prices as a result of colder weather, and a shortened month,” Riot CEO Jason Les said in a press release.

Today, Seeking Alpha analyst Deep Value Investing downgraded Riot to a strong sell “due to anticipated inflation risks impacting bitcoin’s performance, similar to 2022.”

“I foresee rising inflation due to tariffs and government cost-cutting measures, which could delay interest rate cuts until 2026. Historically, bitcoin has struggled in such environments,” the analyst wrote.

Riot overall is down nearly 20% year to date as uncertainty around bitcoin’s price puts pressure on the company’s outlook. At the end of February 2025, the company’s bitcoin holdings stood at 18,692, worth roughly $1.7 billion. This places Riot as the third-largest public company holding bitcoin, behind Strategy and MARA Holdings.

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Altcoin trading activity has lost its mojo

Non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies have seen their trading volume plummet in the past five months. The combined trading volume of ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin, SUI, and chainlink has decreased by 60% since crypto’s October 10 liquidation event, according to Thomas Probst, a research analyst at crypto markets data provider Kaiko.

Main Altcoins Trading Volume in USD
The trading volume of ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, SUI, and LINK.

For all altcoins, spot trading volume on Binance has declined between 80% and 85% to $7.7 billion, while altcoin volume on other exchanges has dropped to $18.8 billion, down from a range of $63 billion to $91 billion in October, a Friday report from Decrypt found, citing data from CryptoQuant.

“This trend may be explained by a contraction in market liquidity over the same period,” Probst told Sherwood News. “This phenomenon is also reflected in the average 1% market depth, which stood at approximately $2.6 million before the October 10 crash and is now closer to $1.7 million when aggregated across ETH, XRP, SOL, SUI, and LINK.” 

Market depth is used by investors and traders to gauge the scale of liquidity in a market. 1% market depth refers to the amount of liquidity needed to move the market by 1%. 

CoinGlass’s Altcoin Season Index, a measure to assess the performance of non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, has been sitting above 50 this week, suggesting that the current market is neither in a bitcoin dominant phase nor an altcoin season.

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Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter. 

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows. 

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

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