Riot Platforms has drawn down most of its Bitcoin treasury to finance a rapid expansion into large-scale data centers. The U.S.-listed miner said it sold 20,264 bitcoin for approximately $1.5 billion during the first nine months of 2026, primarily to fund project development. It ended September with 2,418 BTC, valued at about $202 million at the quarter-end price cited by the company, compared with 11,380 BTC at the end of June.

The third quarter changed the balance sheet

Riot produced 1,637 BTC during the third quarter. Reconciliation of that production with its opening and closing holdings indicates that 10,599 BTC left the balance sheet during the period, matching an independent review of the filing. Management described the reduction as deliberate and said the Bitcoin treasury had become its primary funding source for data-center development. The company also used sale proceeds to repay and terminate a $200 million credit facility with Coinbase Credit, releasing the Bitcoin and other assets that had secured the borrowing.

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The sales altered the trade-off between liquidity and crypto exposure. Riot reported $950.2 million of combined cash and Bitcoin at September 30, including $748.2 million in cash, of which $79.2 million was restricted. The company said it raised no equity during 2026. That gives it a larger cash position for construction and tenant commitments, but leaves shareholders with substantially less direct exposure to future changes in Bitcoin's price through the corporate treasury.

Mining remains material as data centers grow

Riot still produced more Bitcoin than a year earlier, but mining economics weakened. Bitcoin-mining revenue fell to $116.0 million from $160.8 million in the same quarter of 2025, mainly because the average Bitcoin price recognized by the company fell to $70,855 from $114,361. Production increased 16% to 1,637 BTC, while direct mining cost excluding depreciation declined to $39,265 per coin. Power-curtailment credits of $24.7 million helped lower that measure, so it should not be read as a full accounting cost.

The newer businesses partly offset that pressure. Total quarterly revenue was $181.4 million, up 1% year over year. Data-center revenue reached $18.4 million, including rent and tenant fit-out reimbursements, while engineering revenue more than doubled to $47.0 million. Riot also announced a 15-year powered-land lease for 910 megawatts of critical information-technology capacity at its Corsicana campus, describing an initial contract value of about $28 billion. Those values extend over many years and depend on delivery, financing and tenant performance; they are not current-period revenue.

A miner is becoming an infrastructure company

The quarter makes Riot's strategic shift unusually visible: mined Bitcoin is being converted into cash, power infrastructure and long-duration computing capacity. That can diversify revenue away from block rewards and Bitcoin prices, but it also introduces construction schedules, project-finance terms, tenant concentration and technology-demand risk. Management said it expects to continue selling substantially all newly mined Bitcoin. Investors therefore need to evaluate Riot less as a passive Bitcoin holder and more as a capital-intensive digital-infrastructure operator whose mining fleet remains an important source of cash and operational exposure. Future quarters will show whether lease revenue and project financing can scale quickly enough to support that transition without renewed equity issuance or heavier borrowing.

Sources

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