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A miner who loses a site or goes bust mid contract can't deliver, and there's no exchange standing behind this
That was one of my concerns regarding the risks.
By the way, how liquid is this market?
It's tenor dependent. Inside ninety days there are enough counterparties that you can usually get a price in a day or two. Past six months it's bespoke, one buyer at a time, and the price is a negotiation rather than a quote.
Spreads are wide. Single digit percentages wide, not basis points. Clip size is low single digit exahash, so you can't move a large fleet's production in one ticket. There's no order book, no clearing house, no screen. It's a chat market with a broker in the middle, and a lot of the time the broker is us.
So the useful way to think about it: liquid enough that a miner who needs funding can reliably get funded. Not liquid enough to treat as a hedge you can exit quickly. Put a position on expecting to hold it to maturity, because unwinding early means calling the same small number of people and telling them you need out, which is not a negotiating position.
It trades today
The shape: a miner sells forward the output of some hashrate over a tenor, usually 30 days out to a year, a few EH at a time, and takes cash or BTC up front. For the miner that's funding. Cheaper than equity, no lien on the fleet. On the other side is a fund or a treasury company that wants hashprice exposure without buying machines, hiring an ops team, or explaining a datacenter to their board. Both sides get something they actually want, which is the only reason the trade exists.
Difficulty risk sits with the buyer by construction, because what's sold is hashrate over time and not a fixed quantity of coin. Difficulty rips, buyer gets less BTC. That's what they're paid to take and it's precisely the risk the miner wanted off the books. The price leg gets handled separately with a non deliverable forward so the miner can lock fiat.
The risk that actually keeps me up is performance. A miner who loses a site or goes bust mid contract can't deliver, and there's no exchange standing behind this. We manage it with collateral, with sizing, and with the structural advantage that the seller mines to our pool. We're the ones paying them, so delivery comes out of a stream we can see and net against.