Miners Abandon Bitcoin for AI as Power Becomes the New Gold Rush

Bitcoin miners are shifting their focus away from cryptocurrency mining and towards artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) as the prices of power become the new prize. According to CoinShares' Q2 2026 Bitcoin Mining Report, it now costs an average of $75,500 in cash to produce one Bitcoin, which is less than half its October 2025 record high of $58,400. This gap has pushed publicly traded miners below cash breakeven as a group.

Many miners are now renting their power sites to AI and HPC customers, who earn about $1.5 million in yearly profit per megawatt of power, compared to $0.5 million for mining. This shift is changing what investors own when they buy mining stocks, with companies having signed AI or HPC contracts trading at an average 12.9 times expected sales for the next year, compared to 3.7 times for miners without such contracts.

Power is now the scarce resource, with at least 151 restrictions on data center development remaining in force across the U.S., and a backlog of power projects totaling about 2,600 gigawatts waiting to connect to the U.S. grid, roughly double the grid's installed capacity.