Analysis: AI Computing Power Competes for Electricity Resources, Bitcoin Mining Companies Transform to Lease Computing Power for More Stable Income

BlockBeats News, April 7th, according to CoinDesk, AI infrastructure construction is becoming one of the largest sources of new electricity demand in the United States, a trend coinciding with a pivotal moment for Bitcoin miners: whether to keep mining or to lease their infrastructure to AI companies.

This trend is becoming increasingly apparent. Core Scientific has shifted most of its mining power to AI hosting services through a partnership with CoreWeave. Iris Energy and Hut 8 have also expanded their AI and High Performance Computing (HPC) revenue. Last week, Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group disclosed selling over 19,000 bitcoins, indicating that relying solely on mining economics has become unsustainable at the current price and network difficulty. A Bitcoin miner operating 1 gigawatt of hash power sees income fluctuate with Bitcoin's price and network difficulty. Renting out the same 1 gigawatt of hash power to an AI company, on the other hand, can provide a predictable revenue based on contract terms.

With Bitcoin price at $69,000, network difficulty at an all-time high, and energy costs rising as all other industrial users compete for the same grid capacity, renting out hash power to AI often yields higher returns. However, this does not mean that Bitcoin mining is fading away. Network hash rate continues to hit records exceeding 1 zetahash/s. But miners surviving in this current cycle may no longer resemble energy producers mining Bitcoin but rather infrastructure companies—they mine Bitcoin on the side while leasing their true asset—large-scale inexpensive electricity—to the AI industry unable to rapidly build data centers.