Recently my dad has started to dabble in crypto but not in the way most of us would. I have to give him a lot of credit too for this because he found his nice little niche the past few weeks to wheel and deal this stock in. What stock has he been trading that I think of as crypto? Well, it isn't Grayscale it's Riot Blockchain!
While other crypto stocks like Grayscale and even Canaan have gotten pretty big hype for what they do with crypto (Grayscale operates several different trusts that hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc and Canaan builds mining hardware) others like Square and MicroStrategy have made big news to for putting some of their cash reserves into Bitcoin.
Riot Blockchain, with the ticker RIOT, pivoted a few years ago from the pharmaceutical industry to mining Bitcoin. This was during the huge bull run so the stock reached crazy stupid highs of $30 a share. With the crypto crash Riot fell down to the $2-$3 range and kinda just chilled there. Well with the big interest again coupled with the huge price increases RIOT has been making some big cash and the price run-ups and downs have been crazy to watch. My dad initiated positions in the $6 to $9 range and with its volatility has made bank on the options market.
Finally, my 65 almost 66-year-old dad has come around to crypto. It's a super funny thing to see since he is very very old school with his stock market trades so the idea of him getting behind and learning about crypto is great. He will randomly come to find me or call me on the phone to ask what the market is doing to continue to figure out RIOTs fluctuations. It's super cool to see him try this out and honestly apply a mix of old and new school trading habits to absolutely kill it in the market right now.
What is Riot Blockchain
Riot is a crypto mining company that currently only mines Bitcoin. In the last quarter, they reported, Q3, they mined 222 BTC which was an increase from the prior year but slightly down from the 227 they had mined in Q2. From all that I can find they are the only ones really in this section of the market doing this. They are a Nasdaq listed company under the ticker RIOT for those of you who want to look them up. Even with the Bitcoin market not going up today they hit a new 52 week high at $10 a share today before falling in the after-hours. With its super unique nature and how it serves an important place in the crypto space it will be interesting to see if more companies that mine IPO and try to leverage mining different cryptos to get ahead of each other! With mining equipment companies going public and trusts going public this mining role has yet to really develop on the market yet.
