Bitcoin Miners Shift Power to AI Data Centers as Costs Rise
Listed miners’ pretax cash costs reached about $75,500 per Bitcoin in the second quarter, while June hash prices fell to a record low of $27.70 per petahash per second per day.
Bitcoin (BTC) miners are redirecting power, capital and facilities toward artificial-intelligence and high-performance computing data centers as rising costs and limited grid access weaken the economics of mining.
Listed miners’ weighted average pretax cash cost reached about $75,500 per Bitcoin in the second quarter of 2026. June’s average hash price fell to $27.70 per petahash per second per day, its lowest level on record.
The pressure is pushing companies toward business models that combine mining with data-center operations or replace mining altogether. IREN plans to substantially complete its transition away from Bitcoin mining by Dec. 31, 2026. As of June 30, the company had about 23.2 exahashes per second of installed mining capacity using roughly 380 megawatts of data-center capacity.
“We aim to substantially complete the transition by December 31, 2026,” IREN said.
Riot Platforms is pursuing a hybrid infrastructure strategy through a 20-year lease covering 191 megawatts of critical information-technology capacity at its Rockdale facility. The agreement is expected to produce about $9.1 billion in base rent over the initial term, with full deployment anticipated by June 2028.
TeraWulf’s second-quarter revenue totaled $44.8 million, including $31.9 million from high-performance computing leases. Those leases accounted for about 71% of the company’s quarterly revenue.
Cipher Digital is also emphasizing industrial-scale data centers for hyperscalers and other high-performance computing customers while retaining Bitcoin mining as an interim or complementary use of its power. Its Odessa site may continue mining until its power contract expires in July 2027.
Keel is taking a more direct exit path. The company sold 1,085 BTC for $75 million between April 1 and Aug. 7 as part of its wind-down and stopped mining at its Washington site on April 28.
Electricity access is a central reason miners are repurposing existing facilities. A total of 2,061 gigawatts of U.S. generation and storage capacity was actively seeking grid interconnection at the end of 2025. Projects completed in 2025 took more than five years at the median to move from an interconnection request to commercial operation.
That delay makes already energized mining sites potential data-center assets. Converting them still requires construction spending, cooling systems, fiber infrastructure and customers willing to pay for the capacity.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers July 14 while the state develops a regulatory framework, adding another constraint for companies seeking new capacity.
Bitcoin mining revenue depends on the asset’s price, block rewards, transaction fees, network difficulty, machine efficiency and electricity costs. The April 2024 halving reduced the number of new bitcoins miners receive per block, increasing pressure on older and less-efficient equipment.
The result is a mixed industry structure. Some operators are removing mining equipment, while others are leasing parts of their sites to AI customers and preserving mining as a flexible use of available power. IREN’s target date and Riot’s planned full deployment in June 2028 show that the shift is unfolding over several years rather than through an immediate industry-wide exit from mining.
