Druckenmiller family office bets $125.6 million on Bitcoin miners

Stanley Druckenmiller's family office invested $125.6 million in Bitcoin mining stocks last quarter. The family office sold out of Broadcom, Intel, and Micron Technology positions to fund the purchases. Duquesne Family Office listed the positions on August 14 in a Form 13F. The filing showed holdings as of June 30. Bitdeer Technologies was the largest position at $64.7 million. Hut 8 was valued at $36.3 million. Riot Platforms was valued at $20.7 million. IREN was valued at $4 million. The positions represented roughly 2.4% of a $5.21 billion portfolio. Druckenmiller previously said in October 2023 that he owned no Bitcoin. He also said he probably should own it. Druckenmiller had held Bitcoin earlier and sold it. Druckenmiller is known for having no single year of losses for more than 30 years. His average annual return is 30%. During the 1992 currency crisis, Druckenmiller helped George Soros make about $1 billion by betting against the British pound. The purchases targeted mining companies rather than Bitcoin itself or spot funds. Bitdeer mined 2,694 BTC last quarter. Bitdeer also signed a $4.7 billion, 16-year lease with Volta. The lease covers a Norwegian site running Nvidia chips for an AI lab. Riot Platforms is pursuing a similar data center strategy. Druckenmiller also increased Taiwan Semiconductor to $281.6 million from $167.4 million. The family office opened stakes in Advanced Micro Devices, Lam Research, Equinix, and Alphabet. Bitdeer shares fell 25.5% since June 30. Hut 8 shares fell 24.4%. Riot Platforms shares fell 24.3%. IREN shares fell 10%. The same share counts were worth about $94.9 million at the time of writing. The positions therefore showed a paper loss of about $30.7 million. Bitcoin climbed roughly 33% since late June. Bitcoin rose from about $58,600 to levels above $81,000 as of the writing. MARA and CleanSpark posted quarterly mining losses in August. The same squeeze affected the mining sector. A Form 13F is a snapshot rather than a live account of holdings. Druckenmiller may have bought more or sold out since June 30. His next filing lands in November.