Bitcoin's price action has been relatively tame lately, but bitcoin-related stocks are on the rise this week as miners benefit from recent congestion on the network. That congestion was driven primarily by sudden activity in NFT-like assets, or "Ordinals," on the Bitcoin blockchain. As a result of the congestion, Binance over the weekend briefly paused user withdrawals twice, which helped push the price of bitcoin down 7% over two days.
"The transaction fees that are paid to miners have grown and that's healthy for the long-term viability of security of Bitcoin." On Wednesday, publicly traded bitcoin miners Riot Platform and Marathon Digital gained 6% and 9%, respectively. Hut 8 and Canaan rose about 2% each. "There's a whole host of public companies who have emerged in the mining space over the past two years," he added. "They are all beneficiaries from the growth and transaction fees.