Strategy vs. IREN: Which Bitcoin-Focused Stock is a Buy Now?

Strategy MSTR and IREN Limited IREN are two well-known bitcoin-focused stocks. While Strategy is the world’s largest bitcoin treasury company, holding 628,791 bitcoins as of July 29, 2025, IREN Limited offers infrastructure to mine Bitcoins.

Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, has been soaring due to increasing acceptance as a non-sovereign asset, as well as higher institutional and corporate adoption. The liberal policies of U.S. President Donald Trump have been a key catalyst in driving the adoption of bitcoin.

However, Strategy or IREN Limited, which is a buy right now?

The Case for MSTR Stock

Strategy benefits from increasing bitcoin yield, which hit 19.7% at the end of the second quarter of 2025 and 25% year to date. In dollar terms, bitcoin gain was $9.5 billion at the end of the second quarter and $13.2 billion year to date. Strategy now expects to achieve a bitcoin yield of 30% and $20 billion in gains, assuming the bitcoin price hits $150,000 at the end of the year.

The company’s disciplined approach to capital raising through preferred equity offerings — Strike (STRK), Strife (STRF), STRD (Stride) and STRC (Stretch) — is a key catalyst. Strategy has issued $10.7 billion in equities and $7.6 billion in fixed income securities year to date. Among fixed income securities, the company raised $2 billion, $0.94 billion, $2.52 billion, $1.13 billion and $1.02 billion through convertible notes, STRF, STRC, STRK and STRD, respectively.

MSTR is benefiting from rising subscription revenues. In the second quarter of 2025, product licenses and subscription services revenues jumped 44% year over year to $48 million and accounted for 41.9% of revenues, which was 100% software. 

For 2025, Strategy expects operating income of $34 billion, net income of $24 billion and earnings of $80 per share, based on a bitcoin price outlook of $150,000 at the end of the year.

The Case for IREN Stock

IREN Limited is one of the world’s largest and lowest-cost Bitcoin miners, achieving 326% year-over-year hashrate growth in the third quarter of fiscal 2025. IREN Limited achieved its 50 EH/s installed hashrate target in June. 50 EH/s generates roughly $830 million annualized hardware profit. In July, hardware profit jumped 28.7% month over month to $63.3 million. Hardware margin increased 100 basis points in July compared with June.

Expansion of AI Cloud operations bodes well for IREN, which operates 660MW of data centers and is expected to expand up to 910 MW in 2025. In third-quarter fiscal 2025, AI Cloud services revenues jumped 33% year over year to $3.6 million. The company is supplying white labelled compute to leading US AI cloud providers. July revenues were $2.3 million compared with June’s reported revenues of $2.2 million.

The announcement of Horizon 1, a 50MW liquid-cooled data center specifically designed for AI and high-performance computing workloads, represents IREN’s strategic pivot toward higher-value services. This facility will support direct-to-chip liquid cooling and power redundancy with 200kW rack density capabilities, specifically designed to support next-generation NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Horizon 1 remains on track for fourth-quarter 2025 delivery.

The company bought 2.4k next-generation NVIDIA Blackwell B200 and B300 GPUs that will be installed over the coming months at IREN’s Prince George, BC campus. Combined with the existing 1.9k Hopper GPUs, this expansion increases IREN’s fleet to approximately 4.3k NVIDIA GPUs. Supported by 50MW of dedicated power, Prince George can host more than 20,000 Blackwell GPUs.

MSTR’s Earnings Estimate Revisions Steady, IREN’s Improves

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for MSTR’s 2025 loss is pegged at $15.73 per share, unchanged over the past 60 days. The company reported a loss of $6.72 per share in 2024.
 

Strategy Inc Price and Consensus

Strategy Inc price-consensus-chart | Strategy Inc Quote

The consensus mark for IREN Limited’s 2025 earnings has improved eight cents to 14 cents per share over the past 60 days. The company reported a loss of 29 cents per share in 2024.

Stock Performance and Valuation: MSTR Vs. IREN

Year to date, Strategy shares have appreciated 18.4%, while IREN Limited has jumped 107.1%. 

Performance: MSTR vs. IREN
 

In terms of Price/Book, Strategy shares are trading at 2X, a discount compared with IREN Limited’s 2.58X.

Valuation: MSTR is Cheaper Than IREN

Strategy and IREN Limited are overvalued, as suggested by the Value Score of F and D, respectively.

Conclusion

Strategy benefits from its policy to hold bitcoin on its balance sheet. However, bitcoin’s inherent volatility is a headwind for MSTR investors. Meanwhile, IREN benefits from strong prospects from low-cost bitcoin mining and expanding AI Cloud footprint.

IREN Limited, a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company, is a better buy compared with Strategy, which currently has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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