Miners' AI trade rallies on a forced seller: inside the Situational Awareness liquidation

The six listed companies at the center of bitcoin mining's pivot into AI compute rallied hard on Thursday, July 30 — and the catalyst was not a hashprice move, a power contract or an earnings beat. It was a hedge fund being forced out of its shares.

The Block, citing its own equities data, reported that IREN led the group with a 27% gain by around midday, with Bitdeer, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark, Core Scientific and HIVE Digital each up roughly 20% or more. The move followed reports that Situational Awareness — the fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, and a holder of all six as of March 31 — had liquidated its public-stock portfolio.

Why the fund was selling

The Block attributed the reason to CNBC: Situational Awareness needed to raise capital "to meet margin requirements." Protos, summarizing the same CNBC report, added that the fund had suffered "heavy losses" and was consulting investment bankers about a possible orderly wind-down. Both outlets pointed to a Wall Street Journal report that Ken Griffin's Citadel bought the bulk of the stock book. Neither reported what Citadel paid, how the trade was structured, or whether a wind-down has actually been initiated.

The leverage is the mechanism. Protos reported that Aschenbrenner had borrowed to upsize bets including Sandisk, Nebius Group and SharonAI Holdings, each of which lost at least 30% during July. Protos also noted that Situational Awareness held ADRs from SK Hynix's US listing, which closed Wednesday about 15% below their US offering price. When borrowed positions fall far enough, the broker decides the exit timing, not the manager.

What the filing actually shows

The only hard position data in circulation is Situational Awareness's most recent 13F, disclosing US holdings as of March 31, 2026. Protos reported that filing listed 42 positions worth $13.7 billion.

The Block broke out the six crypto-linked names from the same filing: nearly 11.7 million IREN shares, 26 million Core Scientific shares, 11.5 million Riot Platforms shares, about 12.3 million CleanSpark shares, over 3.4 million Bitdeer shares and 3.4 million HIVE Digital shares. The Block valued those stakes at over $400 million, about $390 million, $142 million, $104 million, $29.8 million and $6.4 million respectively — roughly $1.07 billion in total — but stated the valuations were calculated from the share counts at current prices, not the filing's own March 31 marks. Separately, The Block reported the fund held more than 7 million CoreWeave shares valued at $556 million, plus CoreWeave call options on 1.8 million underlying shares with a reported notional value of $140 million.

The Block was explicit about the gap that matters: it is unclear how many shares of any of the six the fund still held immediately before the liquidation. Four months is a long time in this trade.

The manager

Aschenbrenner launched the fund in 2024 with what Protos described as a few hundred million dollars, after OpenAI fired him in April 2024 over a disputed data leak — an ousting he turned into the viral manifesto the fund is named for. Before OpenAI, he was one of five people running Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX Future Fund, joining at its February 2022 launch and resigning on November 10, 2022, the day before FTX filed for bankruptcy. "We were a tiny team, and then from one day to the next, it was all gone and associated with a giant fraud," he told the Dwarkesh Podcast, per Protos.

Protos reported the fund had grown to an alleged $20 billion in assets by June, that a stake in Anthropic had grown to roughly one fifth of assets, and that Aschenbrenner has said almost all of his personal net worth is invested in the fund.

Key facts

• IREN +27%, with Bitdeer, Riot, CleanSpark, Core Scientific and HIVE each up ~20%+ by midday Thursday, July 30 — The Block equities data
• Reason for the sale: capital needed "to meet margin requirements" — CNBC, via The Block
• Citadel bought the bulk of the stock portfolio — Wall Street Journal, via The Block and Protos
• 13F as of March 31, 2026: 42 positions worth $13.7 billion — Protos
• Six crypto-linked names: ~$1.07 billion combined, computed from filed share counts at current prices — The Block
• CoreWeave: 7M+ shares at $556 million, plus calls on 1.8M shares, $140 million notional — The Block
• Sandisk, Nebius Group and SharonAI each down 30%+ in July; SK Hynix ADRs ~15% below US offering price at Wednesday's close — Protos
• Performance claims: up 1,000% by May (Protos, unsourced); up 439% net of fees for January 1–June 30, per a July 24 investor letter cited by the FT

The real-world read

A forced sale is a strange thing to rally on. A seller dumping a billion dollars of stock normally pushes prices down, not up 27%. Neither outlet explains the inversion — no trader quotes, no volume data, no account of how Citadel's purchase was executed. Removal of a known overhang and a block crossing away from the tape are both plausible; neither is established. Anyone reading Thursday's move as a verdict on miner fundamentals is reading something that isn't there.

The $1 billion is a construction, not a disclosure. The Block says so directly: those dollar values come from applying current prices to March 31 share counts. The filing is four months stale, the fund was reportedly selling into a rout, and The Block itself flags that the pre-liquidation share counts are unknown. The number describes a hypothetical portfolio, not the one Citadel bought.

Protos gets the filing calendar wrong. It writes that the next 13F "lands in mid-August, and it will specify the precise drawdown in July." A mid-August 13F snapshots holdings as of June 30 — before the July unwind. The July damage would first appear in the Q3 filing due in November.

The performance numbers aren't comparable. "Up 1,000% by May" and "up 439% net of fees" for the first half measure different windows on different bases; only the second carries a source (the FT, citing a July 24 investor letter). Protos also runs a hypothetical — a 3x leveraged basket of Sandisk, Nebius and SharonAI would have gone to zero in July — which is an illustration of leverage math, not a claim about how the fund was actually positioned.

The investor letter is the tell. Dated July 24, it conceded the fund had "not been immune" to swings, particularly in Asia, while arguing the selloff had created attractive buying opportunities — and, per Protos, asked for more capital. Six days later the portfolio was sold to meet margin calls. A manager soliciting fresh money while facing margin pressure is an interested party, and that letter should be read as one.

Also unsaid: what Citadel paid, current NAV, redemption terms, whether the wind-down is underway, and — for the six miners specifically — what happens to their shareholder registers now that a concentrated thematic holder is gone.

Opinion, and whose

• Aschenbrenner, in the July 24 investor letter cited by the FT: the selloff created attractive buying opportunities. That is a forecast from a manager who was reportedly liquidating within a week.
• Protos's framing — headlined "$20B AI fund blows up," with the "asking for more money" and FTX-adjacency angle — is editorial characterization, not established fact.
• The Block frames the day as "a welcome reversal after weeks of heavy selling" and describes the fund's positions as fitting Aschenbrenner's thesis that power and data-center capacity become critical as AI scales. Both are interpretation.
• The $20 billion peak valuation is Protos's, described as based on "fleeting highs" and explicitly not what investors would receive today.

Sources

• The Block (RT Watson), July 30, 2026 — the share moves and the 13F position-by-position breakdown; cites CNBC on margin requirements and the WSJ on Citadel. The Block discloses that Foresight Ventures is its majority investor and that Bitget is an anchor LP of Foresight. Its page also carries an LMAX Digital promotion and a Polymarket module — advertising, not reporting, and the day-change figures in its embedded price widgets are live quotes rather than Thursday's session.
• Protos, July 30, 2026 — the fund's history, leverage, Anthropic stake, SK Hynix ADRs and the wind-down report; cites CNBC, the WSJ, the FT (investor letter) and the Dwarkesh Podcast. The page carries advertising.
• Primary source referenced but not directly examined here: Situational Awareness's Q1 2026 13F, as of March 31, 2026.

Not investment advice.