For over a decade, Bitcoin mining sites have been embroiled in a vortex of controversy - massive power consumption has sparked congressional hearings, ESG rating downgrades, and ongoing public criticism, as if they were born as "outliers" in the energy and technology industry. But now, a disruptive transformation is happening: these once criticized mining sites have signed 15 year lease agreements with tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic, transforming into core participants in AI infrastructure. The mines themselves have hardly changed, what has truly changed is the new value bestowed upon them by the times. Looking back at the past decade, the development history of Bitcoin miners is a history of struggling in crisis and seeking change in desperate situations. This time, they finally seized the best opportunity to break through the crisis.

There is a saying that goes, "The best opportunity often comes from the most serious crisis." This sentence accurately summarizes the reverse trajectory of Bitcoin miners. From July 2016 to April 2024, miners experienced three Bitcoin halvings, each halving directly cutting block rewards, forcing them to constantly migrate to the most remote corners of the US power grid - the wilderness of West Texas, the countryside of Georgia, and the plains of North Dakota - in search of cheaper electricity to survive. Elimination and transformation go hand in hand, the weak fall in crisis, while those sharp enterprises either adjust their direction in a timely manner or wake up after the pain, laying the groundwork for today's counterattack.

###The first turning point: halving the pressure, highlighting the survival crisis

The first life and death test for Bitcoin miners came from the recent halving event in April 2024. For miners, every halving is a cruel stress test, where halving rewards means shrinking profits, while survival challenges are doubled and upgraded. After the halving, the block reward was reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, and the computing power price (the expected return per unit of computing power for miners) plummeted from $0.12 per hash to $0.047 within a week. By the first quarter of 2026, it had fallen to its lowest point in five years, at only $0.023 per hash per day.

The profit pressure has reached its peak: currently, the average cost of producing one Bitcoin is about $81000, and if non production costs required for operation are included, the total cost far exceeds $115000. However, the current Bitcoin trading price is only $70760, and it has never even exceeded $80000 in the past three months. The only way out for miners is to relentlessly pursue lower mining costs without any control over the Bitcoin price that determines their profits.

Helpless, many miners have abandoned the "mine and sell" model and instead adopted a "mine and hold" strategy - hoarding mined Bitcoin and waiting for the price to rise to a profitable level. This strategy may be feasible in a bull market, but the cyclical fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market are never absent. After a bull market, there will inevitably be a bear market and a pullback, which lays new hidden dangers for miners' survival crisis.

###Second turning point: 10/10 liquidation, forcing transformation and rebirth in dire straits

On October 10, 2025, it became the most terrifying day in the history of the cryptocurrency industry - the largest cryptocurrency clearing event in history broke out, cryptocurrency prices fell to a record level, and the bear market cycle officially began, which completely shattered the illusion of miners' "mining and holding".

In the face of crisis, miners have experienced differentiation: some companies hesitate and wait, missing the window of transformation; Others reacted quickly, announcing strategic transformations within 24 hours of the liquidation event, ushering in a leap from "Bitcoin mining" to "AI infrastructure".

On October 11th, Bernstein released a report that completely redefined the role of Bitcoin miners - they are no longer simply computing power producers, but core asset holders with access to gigawatt level secure power grids, and are a "key link in the artificial intelligence value chain". The report specifically points out that IREN (formerly known as Iris Energy) is a benchmark for miners to transform into AI cloud infrastructure providers.

The wave of transformation quickly swept across the entire industry: digital asset leader Galaxy Digital raised $460 million to transform its Helios mine in Texas into CoreWeave's high-performance computing (HPC) campus, signing a 15 year lease with an expected annual revenue of over $1 billion; Marathon Digital (MARA), the third largest publicly traded Bitcoin holder in the United States, broke the record for long-term Bitcoin holdings by selling 15133 bitcoins within three weeks. Its CEO, Fred Thiel, completely changed his stance and admitted that selling Bitcoin was to "enhance financial flexibility and promote business expansion from pure mining to digital energy and AI/high-performance computing infrastructure.

More and more miners are joining the ranks of transformation: the CEO of Bitfarms bluntly stated that "we are no longer a Bitcoin company" and announced that they will focus on "building the infrastructure for future computing"; CleanSpark considers its holdings of over 13000 bitcoins as productive capital and empowers its transformation through covered call options. Even though Bitcoin is still on the balance sheets of some miners, it is no longer just a reserve asset, but a strategic resource driving infrastructure transformation.

###Lost in battle: The natural advantages and huge opportunities of AI transformation in mining sites

Transforming a Bitcoin mining site into an AI infrastructure is not an easy task - the cost per megawatt can reach $8 million to $11 million, requiring new liquid cooling systems, three-level power redundancy, high bandwidth fiber optics, and network upgrades adapted to GPU training clusters. But little known is that the mining infrastructure that miners have built for survival over the years is already infinitely close to the core needs of AI data centers.

Bernstein analysts pointed out that the existing infrastructure of miners can shorten the deployment time of AI data centers by up to 75%, which is the core reason why tech giants choose to cooperate with mining sites. And a series of heavyweight transactions have further confirmed the feasibility and enormous value of this transformation: IREN has signed a $9.7 billion contract with Microsoft to provide GPU cloud hosting services in its Texas campus, becoming the largest single transaction between a miner and a hyperscale data center; Hut 8 has reached a $7 billion partnership with Google supported Fluidstack and Anthropic; Cipher Mining has signed $8.5 billion contracts with AWS and Fluidstack; The revenue share of Core Scientific's AI hosting business surged from 9% to 39% within four quarters.

The core competitiveness of miners stems from the "invisible moat" accumulated over the years under survival pressure. In order to cope with the halving and pursuit of cheap electricity, they have already signed long-term power supply agreements, purchased industrial land in low-cost energy corridors, built dedicated substations, and achieved direct interconnection with the power grid. The high-voltage transformer equipment, redundant power supply, and thermal management system equipped in modern mining sites can all meet the needs of AI data centers to operate at full capacity 24/7- these seemingly designed configurations for mining have now become the "inherent advantages" of transforming AI infrastructure.

For large-scale data center operators such as Microsoft and Google, time is the biggest winning weapon. At present, the data center interconnection queue time in most markets in the United States is as long as 5 to 7 years. Microsoft's internal forecast shows that the tight situation of its data center resources will continue until 2026 and beyond. Therefore, they would rather ignore the professional knowledge gaps of miners in the field of AI infrastructure than pay for the existing substations, land use permits, utility relationships, and grid connections in the mine - resources that often take years to land elsewhere.

Taking MARA as an example, it recently spent $1.5 billion to acquire energy infrastructure, resulting in a total power generation capacity of over 2.2 gigawatts. These depreciated existing facilities require up to 10 years and a cost of 2 billion to 3 billion US dollars for independent construction, and MARA can complete the renovation at an extremely low cost, which is an advantage that other AI infrastructure builders cannot compare to. As Fred Thiel once said, "Electricity is a scarce investment in the field of AI, and mastering efficient energy platforms is the core competitiveness of the AI era. ”

###Window period closed: rare opportunity, missed never again

The path of miners' counterattack is not without hidden worries, let alone opportunities that everyone can seize. There is a key trap that cannot be ignored: for every one megawatt of energy transferred from Bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure, it indirectly subsidizes miners who are still engaged in mining - which reduces mining difficulty and lowers mining costs for the remaining miners. Perhaps some miners will still reserve some equipment for mining in case of fluctuations in Bitcoin prices, but this model is only applicable to enterprises that have the ability to bear the cost of equipment.

More importantly, there is a fundamental difference in the operation mode between mining and AI infrastructure: mining is an interruptible process, and mining machines can be shut down at any time when electricity costs are high; But AI and high-performance computing cannot be interrupted. Once a lease agreement is signed, it cannot be temporarily cancelled and mining cannot be carried out. This means that once miners choose to transition, it is difficult to turn back and they must give their all.

More importantly, the time window for miners to transition is rapidly closing. The halving of Bitcoin has compressed the economic benefits of mining to its limit, and the 10/10 liquidation event has forced miners to face reality. The flourishing development of AI infrastructure is just right at the right time - miners have both the urgent drive for transformation and the core assets needed for transformation. This "favorable timing, location, and people" situation is almost impossible to repeat.

Nowadays, those miners who are the first to sign cooperation agreements and complete transformation will continue to enjoy the dividends of AI industry development in the next decade; And those miners who hesitate and miss opportunities will eventually be eliminated by the times. From a criticized energy consumer to an infrastructure provider in the AI era, the comeback of Bitcoin miners is not only a rebirth of themselves, but also confirms a truth: crises are never the end, but the starting point for redefining their own value and seizing opportunities of the times.