What happened

Several Bitcoin (BTC -0.41%) miners rose this morning after a good weekend for Bitcoin, in which the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency topped $21,200.

Shares of the Chinese Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms (RIOT 2.96%) traded more than 10% higher earlier today. But as of 11:27 a.m. ET today, shares of Riot were down 2%.

Shares of Hut 8 Mining Corp (HUT 9.11%) traded as much as 19% higher today but now only trade about 8% higher, while shares of HIVE Blockchain Technologies (HIVE 2.81%) were up about 14% but now are only up about 4.5%.

So what

Riot, Hut 8, and HIVE Blockchain are all Bitcoin miners, meaning their business model involves trying to mine as many Bitcoin as possible in the most efficient manner.

There are operational differences at these companies, such as the hardware they use and the computing power they might have, but a big driver for all of these stocks will be the price of Bitcoin because it’s the asset they mine and hold. Although they’ve been more volatile, the direction of their stocks tends to move with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Price data by YCharts

Recently, Bitcoin has been rallying thanks to cooling inflation and a weakening dollar. The token got crushed all year in 2022 because soaring levels of inflation caused the Federal Reserve to rapidly raise interest rates, making riskier assets like Bitcoin much less appealing.

Then the large crypto exchange FTX declared bankruptcy and its founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is believed to…