On April 7, CoinDesk reported that the construction of AI computing power is becoming one of the largest new sources of electricity demand in the United States. This trend coincides with a critical moment for Bitcoin miners: whether to continue mining or lease their infrastructure to AI companies. This trend is becoming increasingly evident. Core Scientific has converted most of its mining capacity into AI hosting services through a partnership with CoreWeave. Iris Energy and Hut 8 have also expanded their revenue from AI and high-performance computing (HPC). Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group announced last week that they sold over 19,000 Bitcoins, indicating that relying solely on mining economics has become unsustainable at current prices and network difficulty. A Bitcoin miner operating at 1 gigawatt of capacity will see its revenue fluctuate depending on Bitcoin prices and network difficulty. In contrast, leasing the same 1 gigawatt of capacity to AI companies can provide a predictable cash flow based on contract terms. Given that Bitcoin prices have reached $69,000, network difficulty has hit all-time highs, and energy costs have risen as all other industrial users compete for the same network capacity, revenue from electricity leasing for AI is often higher. However, this does not mean Bitcoin mining is dying. The network’s computational power continues to set records above 1 zettahash/sec. Nonetheless, miners surviving the current cycle may no longer resemble energy companies focused solely on Bitcoin production; instead, they are becoming infrastructure companies—mining Bitcoin in addition to leasing their real asset—large-scale cheap electricity—for the AI industry, which cannot quickly build data centers.

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