Bitcoin Miners Could Rethink AI Pivot If BTC Hits $126,000

Bitcoin (BTC) miners that redirected power capacity toward AI and high-performance computing are receiving higher valuations as weaker mining economics pressure pure-play operators.

Key Points:

Miners with AI and HPC contracts trade at 12.3 times enterprise value, versus 5.9 times for pure-play Bitcoin miners.

Bitcoin hashprice has fallen to about $31.80 per PH/s.

CoinShares estimates a Bitcoin return to $126,000 could lift hashprice toward $59 per PH/s and revive mining economics.

Bitcoin Miners

Bitcoin’s roughly 45% decline over eight months has widened the divide between miners that secured AI contracts and those still focused on mining. Both businesses need large power supplies, efficient equipment and reliable data centers, giving miners infrastructure they can redirect toward AI and HPC customers.

Shares of TeraWulf, IREN and Cipher Digital have more than doubled over the past year, while MARA Holdings, a slower mover into AI, fell 40%. Hashprice fell from $63 per petahash per second in Jul. 2025 to about $31.80.

The decline is forcing some miners offline. Bitcoin network hashrate has fallen from 1.14 zettahash per second to about 900 exahash per second, or roughly 21%, during one of the longest miner capitulation cycles on record. CoinShares said miners with HPC contracts traded at 12.3 times enterprise value in the first quarter, versus 5.9 times for pure-play miners.

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CoinShares AI Outlook

The industry had secured a cumulative $70 billion in AI and HPC contracts by the end of the first quarter, according to CoinShares.

The valuation gap keeps widening. Riot Platforms recently signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic valued at $9.1 billion, while Riot shares climbed from about $3 to $20 over the past four years.

Mining economics could shift again. CoinShares estimates that a Bitcoin recovery to its October record near $126,000 could lift hashprice to about $59 per PH/s, substantially improving returns for mining-focused operators.

That remains a conditional recovery case. Recent months brought lower Bitcoin prices and weaker hashprice, forcing some operators to cut capacity or seek other revenue as mining returns deteriorated.

Steven Zeiler

Steven Zeiler is Chief Evangelist at Yellow, working with builders to create real-time, non-custodial trading infrastructure using the Yellow SDK. A programmer, technologist, and entrepreneur, he previously worked for Ripple, where he helped architect peer-to-peer interbank payment prototypes and contributed to decentralizing the XRP Ledger through consensus tracking software.