The bitcoin mining sector is experiencing a significant transformation, as evident not from hashrate or difficulty metrics, but from balance sheets.
According to CoinShares’ Q1 2026 mining report, the average cash cost to mine one bitcoin among publicly listed miners surged to about $79,995 in Q4 2025.
Bitcoin has been trading between $68,000 and $70,000, with a CoinDesk report estimating a loss of $19,000 for each BTC mined.
Given these unsustainable figures, the industry is pivoting to artificial intelligence infrastructure, altering the very nature of these mining companies.
Over $70 billion in contracts for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) have been established within the public mining sector, as noted in the CoinShares report. For instance, CoreWeave’s expanded partnership with Core Scientific amounts to $10.2 billion over 12 years. Other significant contracts include TeraWulf’s $12.8 billion in HPC revenue and Hut 8’s $7 billion lease for AI infrastructure.
By the end of 2026, publicly listed miners could generate up to 70% of their revenue from AI, up from about 30% today. This shift indicates that these miners are increasingly functioning as data center operators who also mine bitcoin.
This economic shift is driven by the vast cost discrepancies between bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure; while the former ranges from $700,000 to $1 million per megawatt, AI infrastructure costs between $8 million to $15 million. The potential for higher and more stable returns incentivizes this transition.
