Bitcoin miners shift focus to AI, sell BTC to bridge costs

TLDR

• The average expense to mine a single Bitcoin reached approximately $80,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025, while BTC is trading around $70,000, resulting in a loss of about $19,000 per coin.
• Publicly traded mining companies have secured over $70 billion in contracts for AI and high-performance computing services.
• By the end of 2026, miners could generate up to 70% of their revenue from AI operations, a significant increase from the current 30%.
• Companies are liquidating their Bitcoin reserves and taking on billions in debt to finance their transition into the AI sector.
• The Bitcoin network’s hashrate has decreased from 1,160 EH/s to approximately 920 EH/s as miners withdraw from the network.

(SeaPRwire) –   Bitcoin miners are currently incurring losses on every coin they produce. A recent report from CoinShares indicates that the average cost for publicly listed miners to mine one Bitcoin rose to $79,995 in Q4 2025. With Bitcoin currently trading around $70,000, this means miners are losing approximately $19,000 for each coin mined.

JUST IN: Bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI and selling BTC to fund the transition.
Average cost to mine 1 BTC: ~$79,995
BTC price: ~$70,000
Over $70B in AI/HPC contracts signed as miners liquidate holdings and shift toward data center revenue.$BTC $MARA $RIOT $CORZ $WULF pic.twitter.com/hsSr3tRxlM

— MarketPulseHQ (@MPulseHQ) March 28, 2026

This financial reality is driving a rapid and significant transformation within the industry. Miners are repurposing their operations to function as data centers for AI and high-performance computing (HPC), and are selling their Bitcoin holdings to finance this shift.

The public mining sector has announced over $70 billion in AI and HPC contracts. For instance, CoreWeave’s agreement with Core Scientific is valued at $10.2 billion over 12 years. TeraWulf has secured $12.8 billion in contracted HPC revenue, and Hut 8 has signed a $7 billion lease for AI infrastructure. Additionally, Cipher Digital has entered into a multi-billion-dollar agreement with Google-backed Fluidstack.

Core Scientific already derives 39% of its revenue from AI colocation services, while TeraWulf achieves 27%. IREN, with a rapidly growing AI segment, currently accounts for 9% of its revenue and is expanding its liquid-cooled GPU capacity to 200 megawatts.

James Butterfill, Head of Research at CoinShares, predicts that listed miners could see up to 70% of their revenue generated from AI by the end of 2026, a substantial increase from the current approximately 30%.

How Miners Are Paying for the Shift

The transition is being financed through two primary methods: debt acquisition and the sale of Bitcoin.

IREN currently holds $3.7 billion in convertible notes, and TeraWulf has a total debt of $5.7 billion. In November, Cipher Digital issued $1.7 billion in senior secured notes, which led to a surge in its quarterly interest expense from $3.2 million to $33.4 million in Q4 alone.

Concurrently, publicly listed miners have collectively sold over 15,000 Bitcoin from their peak treasury holdings. Core Scientific divested approximately 1,900 BTC, valued at $175 million, in January. Bitdeer depleted its treasury to zero in February. Riot sold 1,818 BTC, worth $162 million, in December. Marathon, which holds the largest public Bitcoin reserve at 53,822 BTC, updated its policy in a March filing to permit sales from its entire balance sheet reserves.

The economics of AI operations make them significantly more appealing. Bitcoin mining infrastructure typically costs between $700,000 and $1 million per megawatt, whereas AI infrastructure demands $8 million to $15 million per megawatt but offers profit margins exceeding 85% and the security of multi-year contracts.

What’s Happening to Bitcoin’s Network

The industry’s shift away from Bitcoin mining is evident in network data. Bitcoin’s network hashrate reached its peak of 1,160 exahashes per second in October 2025 and has since declined to around 920 EH/s. This decline has been accompanied by three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments, a phenomenon not seen since July 2022.

On March 20, the mining difficulty experienced a 7.7% reduction, marking one of the most significant single-session decreases this year.

CoinShares forecasts that the hashrate could rebound to 1.8 zetahashes by the end of 2026, contingent on Bitcoin’s price returning to $100,000. However, if prices remain below $80,000, the firm anticipates further miner exits.

Miners with secured AI contracts are currently trading at 12.3 times their forward sales, while pure-play Bitcoin miners are valued at 5.9 times. MARA was identified as one of the few major miners maintaining its focus on Bitcoin mining and leveraging low-cost energy sources.