AI gold rush draws crypto firms away from Bitcoin

Yahoo News · Aug 28, 2026

AI gold rush draws crypto firms away from Bitcoin

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AI Gold Rush Draws Crypto Firms Away from Bitcoin

Enegix says it is in active discussions with AI and HPC (high-performance computing) companies and planning to transform a "significant" portion of the business to AI.

But refitting crypto mines for AI is expensive and in some cases, the companies have had to sell some of their Bitcoin holdings to fund the switch.

Wolfie Zhao from The Energy Mag - a publication that rebranded from The Miner Mag to reflect the trend - predicts the industry pivot will continue even as the price of Bitcoin has risen in recent days.

"We expect to see many public miners continue winding down their Bitcoin mining hardware in the coming quarters," he said.

Asked if the shift away from Bitcoin mining might affect the security or stability of the cryptocurrency, Zhao said he hoped more miners will enter the market as conditions improve.

But he predicted many of the big players would not easily be able to switch back to Bitcoin.

"Once that multi-gigawatt power infrastructure has been retrofitted to AI or HPC colocation, there is no turning back," he said.

"You can unplug from the Bitcoin network any time but signing a GPU colocation lease for 10 or 20 years means steady revenue and a commitment to keep the infrastructure up for the tenants."

Bitdeer, which is one of the largest Bitcoin miners in the world, just announced a 16-year deal to provide compute for Anthropic.

But the company's chief strategy officer, Haris Basit, said Bitdeer will continue mining Bitcoin, believing many operators would ultimately pursue a dual-purpose model.

"Bitcoin mining is particularly well suited to that model because it is flexible and interruptible, while AI workloads can provide longer-duration contracted revenues," he said.

This article has been published in bbc.co.uk via Yahoo News.