Miners enjoy BTC gains but are higher energy costs coming?

Block reward miners are breathing a little easier as the BTC token gains in value, but cheap and easy access to U.S. electricity grids might no longer be something they can take for granted.

BTC miners have reason to celebrate this young new year, thanks to the double-whammy of rising token prices (up 7% over the past week) and a reduction in the mining difficulty rate from an average 148.2 trillion hashes (required to ‘find’ a block and claim the reward) to 146.5 trillion.

But while BTC’s fiat price is hitting highs not seen since mid-November, as of late Wednesday, that price remains several thousand dollars below the ~$101,500 all-in cost (including the need to periodically replace older ASIC rigs) of mining a single BTC.

And while the difficulty rate is currently the lowest it’s been since last October, the next adjustment (on January 22) could see that rate tick back upward, particularly if BTC’s price rally proves more than just a manipulative pump to clear out speculators’ short positions.

Many mining operators have already deprioritized their mining operations (or phased them out entirely) as part of their ‘pivot’ to serving as data centers for artificial intelligence (AI) and other high-performance computing (HPC) activities.

However, this pivot could face headwinds as the data centers’ immense energy demands—Blackrock (NASDAQ: BLK) predicted AI could gobble up one-quarter of U.S. electricity demands by 2030—are straining grids and prompting some pushback from politicians who are ostensibly nationalistic AI champions.

On January 12, President Donald Trump announced via his Truth Social that Americans will not have to “pay higher Electricity bills because of data centers.” Trump warned that “big Technology Companies who build [data centers] must ‘pay their own way.’”

Trump namechecked Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) as the first major tech firm to “make major changes” on this front. Sure enough, Microsoft soon announced that it would pay higher costs for electricity in regions where it’s building data centers to minimize the impact on consumers’ utility bills. Microsoft will also cover the costs of expanding local grids to ensure there’s adequate power for all.

On the same day, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a “ratepayer protection plan” that would require data centers to “pay their fair share” and ensure that “every day New Yorkers do not subsidize this energy intensive industry.” Hochul summed up her plan as follows: “these industries must pay more; if they do not, they must supply their own energy.”

Quite what this means for BTC miners is a matter of some speculation, but the general sense is that it won’t be good. Unlike BTC mining, which is a purely speculative activity given the network’s utter lack of utility, AI has actual use cases and thus would presumably be given priority for a share of the public juice.

BTC miners also lack the financial wherewithal of tech giants like Microsoft and could find that paying more for energy and/or building their own power-generating facilities is a far tougher sell for their investors/shareholders.

America(n mining) first

That said, Trump has repeatedly stated his desire to turn America into the global crypto capital, including a speech during the 2024 election campaign in which he claimed BTC would now be “mined, minted and made in the USA. It’s not going to be made anywhere else.” Trump promised miners that he would ensure that they had all the energy they needed to make that pledge a reality.

It’s hard to square Trump’s pledges with his new demand that tech firms need to pay up for making major demands on power grids. It’s unclear whether American Bitcoin Corp (NASDAQ: ABTC), a mining operation that his sons Don Jr. and Eric are involved with, will also be asked to financially atone for their excess energy demands.

Hashrate Index’s latest global hashrate heatmap shows the U.S. with a global mining market share of 37.5%, well ahead of runner-up Russia (16.4%) and third-ranked China (11.7%). No other nation scored in the double-digits.

America’s hashrate enjoyed 39% annual growth last year, but a new Miner Weekly report found that the combined share of major U.S. mining pools (Foundry USA, MARA Pool, and Luxor) fell by more than five points to ~35% by the end of the year. The report suggested this was due to the fact that mining “is no longer the singular focus for many of the industry’s largest players.”

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Tomato, tomahto, token?

Between miners’ insatiable energy demands, the noise of the facilities negatively impacting locals’ quality of life, the relatively few jobs created by mining operations, and a growing realization that the focus of all this disruption is producing digital poker chips, fewer communities are rolling out the welcome mat for miners (or AI data centers, for that matter).

Mining has long been accused of environmental degradation without producing any broader value in return (although that’s not an issue for other blockchains that focus on utility). While miners might quibble with that characterization, the fact that BTC is a transaction ghost town seems sufficient evidence of the network’s lack of utility.

Industry figures and BTC supporters have long protested that environmental concerns over mining are both overblown and outdated, citing studies that show BTC mining is now 52.4% powered by sustainable energy sources, 15 points higher than in 2022.

Efforts have also been made to redirect the vast amount of heat generated by thousands of mining rigs towards some productive purpose. In 2024, carbon-neutral mining-as-a-service outfit Sazmining announced plans to open a hydro-powered mining site in a Norwegian village and use the excess heat to replace a building’s oil-fired boiler and help dry locally caught codfish.

Earlier this month, Canaan Inc. (NASDAQ: CAN) announced a similar proof-of-concept effort to “recover heat from an Avalon computing system and use the heat as a supplemental source for greenhouse operations” in the famously frigid Canadian province of Manitoba. The project is a collaboration with Bitforest Investment, a Canadian firm focused on “high-efficiency greenhouse planting, investment, construction, and management of large-scale data centers.”

This pilot project will see Canaan deploy 360 Avalon rigs that Bitforest will operate at one of its Manitoban tomato greenhouses. The hot water generated from these liquid-cooled units will be funneled into Bitforest’s existing boiler loop, with the aim of improving overall site power efficiency and reducing environmental impact.

Canaan estimates that “approximately 90% of the electricity consumed by the computing servers will be captured and transferred to the heating system.” Canaan CEO Nangeng Zhang said the idea is to “measure, model, and scale heat recovery for agriculture in colder climates.” Canaan hopes to build “a data-driven, replicable model” that can be utilized by “households, businesses, and industrial partners.”

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December’s tale of the tape

Of the seven (soon to be six) publicly traded miners still reporting monthly production figures, nearly all of December’s reports show gains from November, with only one reporting a significant decline. This suggests that fewer corporate miners are working this seam, likely due to their AI/HPC pivots.

As always (but possibly not for much longer), the production reports below are listed in descending order of magnitude.

• Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) claimed the top spot last month by self-mining 636 BTC, 90 more than in November, as hashrate jumped nearly 10 points to 55.2 EH/s. Chief business officer Matt Kong said the company has “significant continued growth planned through 2026 as we deploy additional proprietary rigs.” But Bitdeer continues to shrink its BTC treasury, which fell by 162 tokens to 2,017 at the end of December. The cash is likely coming in handy because, like all of mining’s cool kids, Bitdeer aims to scale its AI/HPC infrastructure “to meet strong demand, expanding GPU deployments and cloud capabilities to support a broad range of digital compute needs.”
• CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) mined 622 BTC in December, up from 587 in November, despite a minor decline in average operating hashrate to 47.2 EH/s. December’s production brought 2025’s total output to 7,746 tokens, up more than 10% from 2024’s total. CleanSpark sold 577 BTC last month, leaving its treasury at 13,099 tokens. CleanSpark recently announced a deal to acquire up to 447 acres of land near Houston, TX along with a long-term transmission facilities extension agreement to power a new 300 MW demand load AI/HPC data center (with potential expansion to 600 MW).
• Cango (NYSE: CANG) mined 569 BTC in November, 22 more than November’s tally, with average operating hashrate dipping a single point to 43.4 EH/s. Cango’s ‘never sell’ policy brought its treasury to 7,528.3 tokens. Cango CEO Paul Yu said “a major shareholder” increased its investment in Cango by US$10.5 million, “representing a powerful vote of confidence in our strategic roadmap.” Cango will use the funds to “drive greater Bitcoin mining efficiency, and accelerate the parallel development of our energy and AI compute platform in 2026.”
• Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) generated 460 BTC in December, up from 428 in November, despite average operating hashrate being basically flat month-on-month at 34.9 EH/s. Riot sold 1,818 tokens in December, a nearly fivefold increase from November’s 383, reducing its treasury to 18,005 tokens at the end of 2025. Riot also said this would be its final monthly production update, leaving only its quarterly reports to glean how its mining ops are faring. In doing so, Riot joins the growing ranks of miners who no longer appear eager to publicly associate themselves with ‘digital gold,’ at least, not when AI/HPC promises a far more golden future.
• Hive Digital (TSXV: HIVE) generated 306 BTC in December, up from November’s 290, despite a modest dip in average hashrate to 23.2 EH/s. For the year as a whole, Hive’s output hit 2,311 tokens, nearly one-third better than 2024’s total.
• BitFuFu (NASDAQ: FUFU) broke December’s positive trend by mining 188 BTC in December, down from 231 in November. Bitfufu’s cloud mining customers saw their output fall from 190 to 151, while the company’s self-mining operations dipped a more modest four tokens to 37. BitFufu’s hashrate was largely unchanged at 26.1 EH/s, while its BTC treasury rose by only 16 tokens (to 1,780) last month, indicating the company’s ongoing ‘opportunistic’ sales of the BTC it generates.
• Finally, Canaan closed out 2025 with a December total of 86 BTC, just three fewer than November, as its month-end operating hashrate slipped 0.5 points to 7.65 EH/s. Canaan closed out the year with 1,750 tokens, 20 more than at the end of November, while its ETH treasury was unchanged at 3,951 tokens.

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