Bitcoin has staged one of its strongest moves of 2026, and listed crypto stocks are once again being treated as leverage trades on the underlying asset. In an analysis published by Odaily, Bitcoin rose from roughly $65,000 on July 24 to a local high of $79,500 on Aug. 21, marking a weekly gain of about 23.5% and lifting its market capitalization back to $1.56 trillion.
Odaily said the rally was driven by three layers of support. First came macro and regulatory catalysts. The U.S. Treasury doubled its long-dated bond buyback size from $2 billion to $4 billion, a move the market nicknamed "QE Lite," while Donald Trump hosted executives from Coinbase, Robinhood, Ripple and others at the White House and pushed the CLARITY Act toward a procedural Senate vote in September. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also proposed a crypto fundraising framework. Second, spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. saw inflows return, with net inflows of $517 million on Aug. 19 and $606 million on Aug. 20 after net outflows of $4.4 billion for June. Third, the market saw what Odaily described as the largest short squeeze on record: more than $2.75 billion in Bitcoin shorts were liquidated on Aug. 19 alone, followed by another $783 million in liquidations over the next 24 hours, 95% of them shorts.
The shift in positioning showed up in sentiment data as well. The Fear and Greed Index jumped from 24, or extreme fear, a month earlier to 67, or greed. With Bitcoin surging, the next question in the report was straightforward: if investors want crypto exposure through equities rather than the coin itself, which stock offers the strongest leverage?
How Odaily framed the stock screen
Using daily data through the close on Aug. 21, 2026, Odaily compared the one-week performance of major crypto-linked stocks and their regression beta versus Bitcoin’s daily returns over the past year. In simple terms, the beta asks how much a stock has historically moved when Bitcoin rises 1%.
The report’s headline conclusions were direct. MSTR was described as the sharpest spear in the current rally, rising 28% against Bitcoin’s 24% gain. CRCL was identified as the strongest rebounder over the past month, up 41.5%, more than twice Bitcoin’s gain over the same period, even though it was still down 23% over the past three months. Miners showed deep internal divergence, with MARA up 22% while CLSK was flat to down, which challenged the idea that every mining stock is simply a magnified Bitcoin trade. HOOD posted the smallest weekly gain, but Odaily argued that the weaker short-term move did not tell the full story.
MSTR: leverage through treasury exposure, financing, and valuation premium
Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, holds about 767,000 BTC, with a total cost basis of roughly $57.6 billion and an average purchase price near $75,700. Odaily said this latest rebound pushed the company back above its aggregate cost line, which helps explain why the stock has shown unusually strong elasticity in the current move.
The report broke MSTR’s leverage into three layers. The first is financial leverage: the company has continued to raise capital through preferred stock and convertible debt offerings to buy more Bitcoin, with a stated goal of holding 1 million BTC by the end of 2026, or about 4.8% of total supply. The second is valuation leverage: the stock often trades around a premium to mNAV, defined as market capitalization divided by the net value of its Bitcoin holdings, so in bullish periods investors can get both Bitcoin appreciation and premium expansion. The third is sentiment leverage. Odaily cited an S&P 500 beta of 3.55 and quoted J.P. Morgan Asset Management strategy head Jared Gross as saying, 「When BTC rises 10%, it is not unusual for MSTR to rise two or three times that amount in a single day.」
The trade-off is just as clear. The company reported a net loss of $12.54 billion in the first quarter of 2026, mainly because of Bitcoin impairment, and research cited in the report suggests it carries around 2.4 times downside leverage when Bitcoin falls. In other words, losses can accelerate faster on the way down than gains expand on the way up.
Odaily’s conclusion was that MSTR fits aggressive investors who want amplified Bitcoin exposure and can tolerate daily swings of plus or minus 10%.
COIN: leverage tied to trading activity and regulatory clarity
Coinbase posted a beta of 1.18, below MSTR, but its correlation with Bitcoin stood at 0.75, second only to MSTR in the screen. Odaily called it the cleanest institutional proxy for the crypto industry. As the first crypto-native company added to the S&P 500, Coinbase also benefits from structural buying by passive funds.
Its leverage, in the report’s view, comes from operating dynamics rather than direct balance-sheet Bitcoin exposure. Trading-fee revenue tends to expand rapidly when market activity picks up, while custody, staking, USDC revenue share, and Base chain revenue from subscriptions and services provide some downside cushion. On top of that, Coinbase has a catalyst that the others do not share to the same degree: the White House meeting and movement on the CLARITY Act make it one of the clearest beneficiaries of a friendlier U.S. regulatory path.
Still, the stock has not fully recovered from earlier damage. Odaily said Coinbase remained down about 17.5% year to date in 2026 because the liquidation wave in October 2025 crushed speculative trading volumes, and diversification was not enough to fully offset the drop in fee income.
That leaves COIN as a fit, in Odaily’s framework, for investors who want industry growth and regulatory upside without taking on MSTR-level volatility.
CRCL: a crypto stock that does not depend primarily on Bitcoin price
Circle, the issuer of USDC, stood out in the table because its revenue model is structurally different. Its income has little direct connection to the Bitcoin price. Instead, the main engine is growth in USDC circulation and the interest earned on reserves. Odaily pointed to the October 2025 liquidation episode as an example: while trading volumes were hit, Circle’s revenue still grew because USDC supply expanded by more than 30% and reserve interest income scaled with it.
Even so, the market has not treated CRCL as a sleepy defensive stock. Based on roughly one year of daily return data since listing, Odaily calculated its Bitcoin beta at 1.27. The stock rose 22.9% during the week and 41.5% over the last month, making it the strongest rebound name in the group.
Its real leverage lies elsewhere. Rate cuts would directly compress reserve income, which gives CRCL a risk profile that moves in a different direction from COIN and MSTR. At the same time, progress on the CLARITY Act and stablecoin legislation creates a policy tailwind unique to the company. Its 23.4% decline over the past three months, as cited in the report, shows that concerns about lower rates can weigh on the stock even when Bitcoin itself is not driving the move.
Odaily’s reading was that CRCL suits investors who want exposure to stablecoin infrastructure rather than the coin price itself, but not those looking for a low-volatility shortcut. The risk has simply shifted toward interest-rate sensitivity.
HOOD: the smallest weekly gain, but one of the stronger longer-term profiles
Robinhood’s HOOD rose 13% during the week and carried a beta below 1, making it look less exciting than the more direct crypto names over a short window. Over three months, though, the stock was up 42%, the only name in Odaily’s table to outperform Bitcoin by a wide margin over that period.
That resilience came from a broader revenue mix. Robinhood still has stock trading, options, retirement accounts, and other brokerage businesses, which means a crypto downturn does not automatically break the whole earnings base. At the same time, the company retains upside if crypto activity returns. Odaily highlighted Robinhood’s 27 million users and its Robinhood Chain, which launched on July 1 and crossed $1 billion in on-chain transaction volume within days.
The downside is also explicit. Crypto-related revenue in the second quarter of 2026 fell nearly 40% year over year, according to the report, showing how quickly retail trading enthusiasm can fade. Odaily therefore framed HOOD as a lower-volatility crypto equity for investors who are bullish on a retail comeback but still want some downside protection.
Miners: four layers of leverage, and the weakest consistency
Mining companies, in theory, are among the most leveraged Bitcoin derivatives available in public markets. Revenue depends on the coin price, cost depends on power prices, market share depends on hash rate, and survival depends on access to financing. Those four variables interact, and weakness in any one of them can punch through profitability.
The latest week offered a clear warning. While Bitcoin rose 24%, MARA gained 22%, RIOT gained only 4%, and CLSK fell. Looking at the past month, the three miners were down 12%, 17%, and 23%, respectively, even as Bitcoin rose 20% over the same period.
Odaily attributed that mismatch to persistent pressure on mining economics after the halving and to investor preference for companies that can tell an AI data-center transition story rather than relying only on mining revenue. The report also said miners showed the lowest beta readings among the names in the screen, which suggests a pattern of "Bitcoin up, mining stocks flat" may become more common.
For that reason, the article argued miners are suitable only for investors willing to evaluate individual names through power costs, transformation progress, and financing channels. They are not a simple buy-and-hold substitute for leveraged Bitcoin exposure.
The bigger shift: crypto equities no longer trade as one block
Odaily’s broader conclusion was that one of the most important market changes in 2026 is that "crypto stocks" can no longer be treated as a single category. Year-to-date performance in the report showed CRCL up about 11%, while COIN was down about 17.5% and MSTR down about 21.5%. That spread of roughly 30 percentage points reflects how far their revenue drivers have split apart: exchanges depend on trading volume, treasury-heavy companies depend on Bitcoin price and valuation premium, stablecoin issuers depend on rates and supply growth, and miners depend on cost structure.
From that perspective, being bullish on Bitcoin is only the first branch of the decision tree. Investors who want a direct price amplifier may look to MSTR. Those seeking crypto infrastructure and regulatory upside may prefer COIN. Those focused on stablecoin infrastructure and legislative momentum may choose CRCL. Those who want lower volatility and optionality on a retail trading rebound may lean toward HOOD. And those chasing the highest theoretical leverage may still turn to miners, but only after company-by-company work.
The report closed with a risk warning. The immediate force behind the latest rally was a short squeeze, and after Aug. 22 long liquidations had already begun to exceed short liquidations. Over 24 hours, long liquidations reached $30.85 million, accounting for 66% of the total, and the $77,500 to $80,000 range remained a defined resistance zone. In leveraged trades, the same amplification that works on the way up can reappear just as quickly on the way down.