Bitcoin Miners Unplug 23% as AI Revenue Surges 52%

This text first appeared in Miner Weekly, a weekly publication by Blocksbridge Consulting curating the most recent information in power, compute, infrastructure, and knowledge evaluation from The Power Magazine. The unique article will be seen right here.

Public miners analyzed by TheEnergyMag shed an estimated 56 EH/s of realized hashrate over the primary half of 2026—a 15% contraction in comparison with the ten% drop throughout the Bitcoin community. A lot of that energy was not leaving compute altogether. It was being redirected towards the AI retrofit.

The change has appeared within the earnings assertion. Instantly reported HPC and AI income among the many comparable miners rose 52% from the primary quarter. For the businesses furthest into the transition, Q2 additionally marked the primary time that HPC colocation or AI-cloud income overtook the mining income being wound down.

The conversion is pricey. A earlier Miner Weekly evaluation tracked roughly $30 billion of capex by public miners and AI friends. PwC now estimates that the broader AI/>

These figures divide recurring HPC, colocation or base-rent income by estimated billable megawatt-hours. Match-out reimbursements and construction-related income are excluded the place separable.

The estimates are delicate to timing. A facility delivered midway by way of 1 / 4 can’t be handled as if it operated for all 91 days. Straight-line lease accounting may additionally acknowledge income earlier than money is collected.

Even with these limitations, the landlord-like fashions cluster in a comparatively slender vary of roughly $140 to $200 per MWh.

The economics change when an organization sells compute as a substitute of powered house.

CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) deployed $6.42 billion within the quarter. Based mostly on its knowledge heart price of income and estimated lively energy, we calculate that it was paying roughly $322 per MWh for internet hosting, with a variety of $268 to $403 relying on the capacity-ramp assumption.

That price contains greater than the lease obtained by an information heart landlord. It helps clarify why a neocloud can spend greater than $300 per MWh on infrastructure whereas a miner-turned-landlord initially acknowledges solely $150 to $200 per MWh.

Full-stack operators report nonetheless larger income. IREN produced an estimated $807 per MWh of AI-cloud income, HIVE roughly $924, WhiteFiber $958, and Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) about $1,213.

These figures usually are not comparable with lease. They embrace the worth of GPUs, networking, software program and orchestration. In addition they switch utilization and hardware-obsolescence danger to the operator. Bitdeer demonstrates the excellence notably properly: its AI-cloud income density was the very best within the group, however the phase’s reported prices exceeded its income.

The way it compares with mining

However nonetheless, AI cloud stays in a unique income league. Its estimated median of $940.74/MWh is greater than 5 instances the $179.13/MWh generated by Bitmain’s latest-generation Antminer S23 Hyd. and greater than eight instances the $113.45/MWh from an S21 Professional.

The extra attention-grabbing comparability is between bitcoin mining and HPC colocation. TheEnergyMag’s estimated median of $174.90/MWh is nearly similar to the S23 Hyd.’s present mining income. However the underlying economics are very totally different: colocation income is usually contracted for years and should cross electrical energy prices by way of to the client, whereas bitcoin income modifications repeatedly with bitcoin’s value, community problem and transaction charges.

Zcash mining sits between these extremes. A Z15 Professional—rated at 840 KSol/s and a couple of.78 kW—presently generates an estimated $585.61/MWh. That’s roughly 3 times the income density of an S23 Hyd., though it comes with considerably better volatility. Just a bit over per week in the past, the income was sitting at over $700/MWh for Zcash mining.

That makes Zcash mining quickly extra revenue-dense than most colocation agreements and aggressive with lower-end GPU-cloud income.

However the phrase “quickly” is doing appreciable work. A miner can set up ASICs rapidly and promote manufacturing right into a liquid market, however the income can fall in a single day. An HPC campus can require years of capital deployment and building, however a creditworthy tenant might then present contracted funds for a decade or longer.

Income per MWh explains why miners need AI tenants. Capex explains why solely a few of them will create enticing returns.