Bitcoin Miners Are Selling BTC and Pivoting to AI as Mining Costs Outpace Prices

TLDR

• The average cost to mine one Bitcoin hit ~$80,000 in Q4 2025, while BTC trades around $70,000 — a loss of ~$19,000 per coin
• Public miners have signed over $70 billion in AI and high-performance computing contracts
• Miners could earn up to 70% of revenue from AI by end of 2026, up from 30% today
• Companies are selling Bitcoin treasuries and taking on billions in debt to fund the AI shift
• Bitcoin’s network hashrate has dropped from 1,160 EH/s to around 920 EH/s as miners exit

Bitcoin miners are losing money on every coin they produce. According to a new report from CoinShares, the average cost to mine one Bitcoin among publicly listed miners reached $79,995 in Q4 2025. Bitcoin is currently trading around $70,000, meaning miners are losing roughly $19,000 on every coin they produce.

That math has forced the industry into a fast and sweeping change. Miners are converting their operations into AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers — and selling their Bitcoin to pay for it.

More than $70 billion in AI and HPC contracts have been announced across the public mining sector. CoreWeave’s deal with Core Scientific alone is worth $10.2 billion over 12 years. TeraWulf has $12.8 billion in contracted HPC revenue. Hut 8 signed a $7 billion lease for AI infrastructure. Cipher Digital has a multi-billion-dollar deal with Google-backed Fluidstack.

Core Scientific already earns 39% of its revenue from AI colocation. TeraWulf is at 27%. IREN is at 9% and growing fast, with up to 200 megawatts of liquid-cooled GPU capacity being built out.

CoinShares Head of Research James Butterfill says listed miners could get up to 70% of their revenue from AI by end of 2026 — up from around 30% today.

How Miners Are Paying for the Shift

The transition is being funded two ways: debt and Bitcoin sales.

IREN now carries $3.7 billion in convertible notes. TeraWulf holds $5.7 billion in total debt. Cipher Digital issued $1.7 billion in senior secured notes in November, which pushed its quarterly interest expense from $3.2 million to $33.4 million in Q4 alone.

At the same time, publicly listed miners have collectively sold more than 15,000 Bitcoin from peak treasury levels. Core Scientific sold around 1,900 BTC worth $175 million in January. Bitdeer reduced its treasury to zero in February. Riot sold 1,818 BTC worth $162 million in December. Marathon, the largest public Bitcoin holder with 53,822 BTC, expanded its policy in a March filing to allow sales from its full balance sheet reserve.

The economics make AI far more attractive. Bitcoin mining infrastructure costs around $700,000 to $1 million per megawatt. AI infrastructure costs $8 million to $15 million per megawatt, but delivers margins above 85% with multi-year contract visibility.

What’s Happening to Bitcoin’s Network

The shift away from mining is showing up in the data. Bitcoin’s network hashrate peaked at 1,160 exahashes per second in October 2025. It has since dropped to around 920 EH/s, with three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments — the first such streak since July 2022.

On March 20, mining difficulty dropped 7.7%, one of the steepest single-session declines this year.

CoinShares projects hashrate could recover to 1.8 zetahashes by end of 2026 — but only if Bitcoin returns to $100,000. If prices stay below $80,000, the firm expects more miners to exit.

Miners with secured AI contracts now trade at 12.3 times forward sales. Pure-play Bitcoin miners trade at 5.9 times. MARA was noted as one of the few large miners remaining focused on Bitcoin mining and low-cost energy sources.

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