Bitcoin miners’ AI pivot pays off, but mining could revive with one twist

MARA’s performance reflects the slide in hashprice, the expected daily revenue generated by a unit of bitcoin mining power. In July last year, the hashprice was $63 for each petahash per second (PH/s) of power. It’s now around $31.80 per PH/s.

Not surprisingly, an increasing number of miners are finding it unprofitable to continue production and are turning off their machines, a process known as capitulation. As a result, the Bitcoin network’s hashrate — a measure of mining power — has dropped to 900 exahash per second (EH/s) from 1.14 zettahash per second (ZH/s), or about 21%.

This is already one of the longest capitulation cycles on record, and it may not be over.

In the meantime, the market has repriced companies that have secured AI and HPC contracts.

According to CoinShares’ first-quarter mining report, miners with HPC contracts trade at 12.3 times their enterprise value. That compares with the 5.9 times commanded by pure-play bitcoin miners.

The report also estimated that the industry had secured a cumulative $70 billion in AI and HPC contracts by the end of that quarter.

As the year progressed, miners have announced a growing number of contracts at increasingly large valuations. Just a week ago, for example, Riot Platforms (RIOT) signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic valued at $9.1 billion. Riot’s shares have climbed from around $3 to $20 over the past four years, highlighting how dramatically the market has repriced miners with exposure to AI infrastructure.