Whats the downside risks of investing in miners over just buying actual bitcoin?

Wanted to get people's opinion on this to see if theres anything Im missing. Ive been thinking a lot about setting myself up for maximum profit during the next bullrun, and while I've been seriously DCAing since April (didnt set an alert for <20k bitcoin and was distracted with life so i missed the massive dip last october) I've been thinking of putting extra money toward RIOT LEAPS as opposed to increasing my DCA buys.

Looking at riots chart it recently seemed to have kinda de-synced from bitcoins actual price and it looks undervalued compared to the price of the actual asset. Right now we're back to where the share price was in april, while in July the share price was about double despite bitcoin only trading 10% higher or so at 30k. Getting 2026 yearlies (I have a couple 2025 ones but I think 2026 is the safer bet and it's only 25% more expensive) for $10 calls is about the equivalent of 2x leverage and based on the last bullrun the price went up to almost 80 or an 8x return despite bitcoin itself only being about 2x from where it is now. With options this would give about a 20x return at today's prices.

Now of course a bullrun is not necessarily guaranteed but I agree with many posters here that we're almost in a perfect storm to have etf approvals and the halving. I'd say it's highly likely we'll see close to the same run back up to 60k or so at least, even more if there's serious interest in an ETF release.

The downsides risks as I see them are:

Since miners are shares in a company they are much more linked to the markets themselves and the market tanking would drag the share price down more than it would drag down bitcoin itself, these losses would be greater with options, even with a two year expiry.

The huge run up in riots price is more a symptom of the massive stimulus pumped out during covid and the previous run up will not be comparable with the current economic conditions and not having billions of free money having just be printed. If there is an ETF released some or most of this money would flood into that rather than into miners, since miners were basically the only option for hedge funds in 2021.

With the halving the block reward would be halved and would also mean the price would have to double in order for RIOT to make the same revenue. As long as demand remains the same, over time the price should reach this level naturally. This means that RIOT will need to be able to cover those costs from halving to the point where the price equalizes. Based on their 2022 financial statement they have $230 million cash on hand, no long term debt, and 6,974 bitcoins or an extra $195 million. I've been having trouble finding normal yearly expenses but their total liabilities seem to be only around $100 million so it seems they have enough cash and assets to weather any losses for well over a year. The average cost to mine a bitcoin also seems to be around 11k meaning they could reduce investments if needed and still come out ahead at current prices. I suppose with the halving this cost would double which means the price would need to be maintained at 22k-23k.

With options there's the risk of if bitcoin returns to sub 20k then riot may go from around 10 back to the 3-4 range which would probably be around a 60-90% loss. I feel this is not likely to be sustained until the beginning of 2026, and in this worst case scenario as long as the initial investment is <3k all of it can be reclaimed in taxes. So the risk reward is minimum 20x upside and losing it all on the downside. But with getting it back the only true risk is the interest or growth that could be earned otherwise in a HYSA, the S&P, or paying down my debt so somewhere between 3k times 5-10% times 1-2 years so like 300-600 max true loss.

Am I missing anything in this analysis? I'm certainly not going to stop my dca buys for the actual asset but I'm in a situation where I can basically double my buys or put that extra towards options. I don't think I want to reduce my stock buys to reallocate into bitcoin though. Currently 50% of my investment income is going towards bitcoin, and only makes up about 25-30% of my portfolio.

It seems to be either 2-4x upside with -50%-70% downside buying bitcoin or a 20x-30x upside with 80-90% downside with buying options. The risk reward on options seems much more favorable to me. Of course I could get international trading and do options on the Canadian btc etf for the leverage but the miner returns seem much more favorable. Any glaring holes I'm missing? My main goal is to put this money towards bitcoin instead of paying extra towards the principal on my student loans and have them all paid off in 2026