Bitcoin Miners Turn to AI as Revenue Driver
Bitcoin miners are rapidly pivoting away from cryptocurrency roots as artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure is set to drive nearly 70% of their revenue by December, up from about 30% today. This projection comes from digital asset manager CoinShares' Q1 2026 mining report, which was cited by Bloomberg.
The shift follows a brutal quarter for miners, with hashprice - the measure of daily revenue per petahash - falling to around $29, levels last seen after the April 2024 halving. Bitcoin mining gross margins have dropped to roughly 60%, down from above 90% during the 2021 bull run.
More than $70 billion in cumulative AI and high-performance computing contracts have been announced across the public mining sector. James Butterfill, CoinShares head of research, noted that AI offers structurally higher and more stable returns than mining, with cloud margins near 85%.