Bernstein : Bitcoin miners benefit from the AI boom

Bitcoin volatility has long shaken miners like poorly secured chests on an old ship. When BTC dives, margins shrink, machines run, and the promised treasure sometimes turns to dust. Yet, AI is now changing the map. Miners are discovering that their fortune may lie in the megawatts already plugged in.

Bitcoin miners now hold the key to the electric vault

Wall Street is starting to look at bitcoin miners with radically different eyes. According to Bernstein, these players have a rare advantage: immediate access to massive electric power. Indeed, AI-specialized groups are less interested in buildings than quickly available megawatts.

Over the past two years, miners have signed seventeen agreements worth more than $110 billion. These contracts pertain to about six gigawatts of energy capacity destined for players like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and CoreWeave. This power represents nearly 10% of AI data centers currently under construction in the United States.

According to Bernstein, this represents nearly 10% of AI data centers under construction in the United States.

Jensen Huang sets the industrial scene: 

Bitcoin miners remain best positioned to solve the access delay to computing power problem. Their planned energy portfolio reaches 30 gigawatts, and their operational experience enables quick delivery of ready-to-host infrastructures.

Source: Decrypt / Nvidia

AI transforms old mining farms into recurring vaults

Pure mining remains a tough, cyclical, sometimes thankless job. You have to buy ASICs, pay for electricity, cool the machines, then endure the halving. When the reward drops, miners must hope for a more expensive bitcoin to preserve their margins. AI now offers another mechanism, much less dependent on BTC moods.

Hyperscalers want sites that are quick to use, as building a data center often takes years. Miners already own the land, connections, and substations. Bernstein thus forecasts AI revenues rising from $1.2 billion in 2026 to $10.7 billion in 2030.

TeraWulf embodies this shift with a 3.8 GW energy portfolio. Bernstein targets $1.7 billion in AI revenues for the company by 2030. Cipher Digital holds 495 MW contracted and an order book of $11.4 billion. Bitcoin remains in the room, but electricity now holds the cash box.

Yesterday BTC hunters, today guardians of the digital treasure

This transformation does not guarantee a total victory. Bernstein points out serious risks: client concentration, heavy financing, and network approvals. Fluidstack accounts for about 91% of TeraWulf’s contracted revenues. At Cipher, AWS weighs heavily in the business pipeline. Additionally, some power pipelines still await green light from network managers.

Yet, the arbitrage remains strong. A megawatt dedicated to bitcoin is worth much less than a megawatt converted into AI-grade data center infrastructure. Colocation contracts, often signed over 10 to 25 years, also bring rare stability in mining.

Mining Grid sums up this need for access: 

Our goal with Power NODES is to support the Grid layer of the network by simplifying access to the cloud computing industry through a highly scalable architecture. We provide a sophisticated framework perfectly aligned with the global blockchain network’s fundamental principles.

Source: Mining Grid

The numbers hidden in the vault

• 17 AI agreements signed by miners in two years;
• $110 billion committed in these energy contracts;
• 6 GW reserved for hyperscalers and neocloud operators;
• $10.7 billion projected AI revenues for 2030;
• Bitcoin price: $63,776 at the time of writing.

Crypto traders are now strengthening their protections, as bitcoin has just hit its lowest levels in several months. This caution reminds that BTC remains a fiercely volatile asset. But for some miners, AI opens a second vault, less exposed to market storms.