Although not everyone is willing or able to purchase Bitcoin (BTC -2.42%) directly in their investment accounts, shares of Riot Platforms (RIOT -1.49%) provide exposure to the cryptocurrency's potential upside. There may not be a 1-to-1 correlation between Bitcoin and Riot stocks, but there's no denying the influence of the former on the latter.

I've chosen Riot Platforms stock as my July pick to express my bullish outlook on Bitcoin and companies that produce it. The company's growth is remarkable and its ambitions are undeniable, especially in light of a large-scale mining infrastructure purchase that will solidify Riot Platforms' place as a crypto-producing powerhouse.

A comeback in progress

Sometimes, zooming out on a chart can provide crucial perspective. Both Bitcoin and Riot Platforms stock are prime examples of this. Bitcoin is up sharply year to date, but it's still nowhere near its all-time high of around $69,000.

As you might expect, due to their close correlation, Riot stock's story largely parallels that of Bitcoin. The Riot Platforms share price at less than $14 is far below its all-time high of more than $70. That suggests there may be room to run if there's a recovery.

And indeed, that recovery appears to be in progress as Riot stock more than tripled during 2023's first half. So don't assume that Riot Platforms shares must run out of steam in the near term just because they've richly rewarded this year's investors.

Besides, the recent performance of Bitcoin and Riot stock is remarkable, considering the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) legal actions against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase Global. Of course, Riot Platforms isn't a cryptocurrency trading platform, and unless SEC Chairman Gary Gensler suddenly starts putting mining operations in his crosshairs, there's no particular reason to expect Riot to come under fire from regulators anytime soon.

A monumental miner

Among publicly traded cryptocurrency miners, Riot Platforms makes no bones about its ambitions to mine massive quantities of Bitcoin and to do so at a breathtaking pace. That's practically all Riot does, and the company is a powerhouse in that very specific niche.

The numbers back this point up as Riot Platforms produced 676 Bitcoins in May, representing 45% year-over-year growth. Moreover, Riot's May Bitcoin sales (net proceeds) increased 121% year over year to $16.5 million, even while the average net price per Bitcoin sold decreased 8%.

However, some blockchain aficionados will insist that the metric to watch is a crypto miner's hash rate. To put it simply, hash rate refers to a cryptocurrency producer's computational power and, by extension, its mining capacity.

If everything goes according to plan, Riot Platforms' hash rate is set to expand quickly. Riot ended May with a hash rate capacity of around 10.6 EH/s (that's exahashes per second, with one exahash equating to 1 quintillion hashes). Also at the end of May, Riot Platforms anticipated ramping up its "total self-mining hash rate capacity of 12.5 EH/s in the second half of 2023."

That's not where the hash-rate ramp-up ends, though. Due to Riot Platforms' agreement to purchase 33,280 Bitcoin miners initially from MicroBT, and an option to purchase as many as 66,560 more miners in that deal, Riot anticipates increasing its self-mining hash rate capacity to 20.1 EH/s by mid-2024.

Will increased mining capacity translate into more Bitcoin production and, hence, robust revenue generation for Riot Platforms in the coming months? It's never that simple, as external factors could weigh on cryptocurrency prices, thereby hurting Riot's financial results. Still, if hash rate growth is a useful gauge, then Riot Platforms stock should continue to provide prime exposure to the Bitcoin production market.