Analysis: AI computing power competes for electricity resources; bitcoin miners transform by renting out computing power to obtain more stable returns

According to BlockBeats, on April 7, CoinDesk reported that AI computing power development is becoming one of the largest sources of new electricity demand in the United States, and this trend is emerging precisely as Bitcoin miners face a choice: continue mining or rent out their infrastructure to AI companies.

This trend is becoming more and more apparent. Core Scientific, through its partnership with CoreWeave, has converted most of its mining computing power to AI hosting services. Iris Energy and Hut 8 have also expanded their AI and high-performance computing (HPC) revenues. Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group disclosed last week that they sold more than 19,000 Bitcoins, indicating that relying solely on mining economics is no longer sufficient to sustain operations at current prices and network difficulty. A Bitcoin miner operating 1 gigawatt of computing power will see its revenue fluctuate with the Bitcoin price and network difficulty. However, renting the same 1 gigawatt of computing power to AI companies can generate contractually agreed income with predictable cash flow.

With the Bitcoin price at $69,000, network difficulty at an all-time high, and energy costs rising as all other industrial users compete for the same grid capacity, renting out computing power to AI often yields higher returns. However, this does not mean Bitcoin mining is disappearing. Network computing power continues to set records above 1 zetahash/s. Still, miners that survive this cycle may no longer resemble energy companies producing Bitcoin but rather infrastructure companies—they mine Bitcoin on the side while renting out their true asset—large-scale, low-cost electricity—to the AI industry, which cannot quickly build new data centers.