Riot Blockchain, one of the few publicly traded bitcoin mining companies in the U.S., closed trading Friday with its second largest weekly gain since April 2019 ahead of the firm’s Q2 earnings release next week. The gain marks a continuation of the stock’s rally that started mid March after the market’s crash.
- Riot Blockchain gained 29% closing since Monday, closing the week at $3.75.
- The company set a 2020 high of $4.58 Thursday afternoon.
- Q2 earnings are scheduled to be released early next week, the company told CoinDesk.
- "We're strong believers in the macroeconomic fundamentals underlying bitcoin," said Jeff McGonegal, CEO of Riot Blockchain. Riot’s rally is connected to the increasing investor attention paid to bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies generally, he added.
- Riot has gained 70% this quarter following BTC, which has rallied 24% over the same period, according to Messari, trading near $11,500 at last check.
- The company pivoted from biotechnology to blockchain technology in October 2017, and focused exclusively on bitcoin mining in 2019, McGonegal said in an email correspondence with CoinDesk.
- Riot has a current mining capacity of 357 petahash per second with an anticipated increase to 566 petahash by Q4.
- Even with recent gains, however, the shares are a far cry from their all-time intraday high of $3638.40, reached in October 2007.