Bitcoin miners’ AI pivot pays off, but mining could revive with one twist Miners with AI and high-performance computing contracts have commanded higher valuations as declining bitcoin prices and hashprice squeeze pure-play operators. – Bitcoin miners that pivoted their power…
frastructure to AI have secured richer stock-market valuations and stronger revenue prospects, while pure-play operators remain squeezed by weak earning capacity. – AI and HPC-focused miners trade at 12.3 times enterprise value, compared with 5.9 times for pure-play bitcoin miners. – Bitcoin returning to its $126,000 all-time high could lift the hashprice to around $59 per PH/s and revive mining economics, according to CoinShares. The pivot from bitcoin While the shift has been underway for several years, the payback has become particularly clear during a bear market that has seen the price of the largest cryptocurrency slump 45% in eight months and eaten into miners’ profit margins
At heart, the two industries require much the same set of skills: the ability to secure cheap energy deals to power massive computing warehouses and to source and maintain the most efficient equipment while reducing downtime. With the hyperbolic growth in demand for AI and the simultaneous drop in demand for bitcoin, the divergence between companies that secured HPC contracts and those that remained focused solely on bitcoin mining is apparent in their stock market performance. Among the early adopters, TerraWulf (WULF), IREN (IREN) and Cipher Digital (CIFR) have more than doubled over the past year.
MARA Holdings (MARA), a laggard in the pivot towards AI, fell 40% over the same period. MARA’s performance reflects the slide in hashprice, the expected daily revenue generated by a unit of bitcoin mining power. In July last year, the hashprice was $63 for each petahash per second (PH/s) of power.