Miner Weekly: The AI vs Bitcoin stand-off is on
This article first appeared in Miner Weekly, BlocksBridge Consulting’s weekly newsletter curating the latest news in bitcoin mining and data analysis from TheEnergyMag. Subscribe to receive in your inbox once a week.
Not trying to be divisive, but we’re starting to witness a standoff between pure bitcoin mining companies and those who have expanded their business footprints to HPC and AI hosting. So far, it seems the AI camp is gaining the upper hand—at least this month.
Just this past week, we saw reports of Bit Digital (NASDAQ: BTBT) procuring more GPUs for AI revenues, Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) expanding hosting capacity for CoreWeave, Soluna raising $12.5 million and Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) securing an $150 million investment for their respective AI expansion campaigns.
Last month, we alluded to the potential of IREN, BTBT, and HUT given their positions on the lower end of the price-to-hash ratio chart and the fact that they all have ongoing AI business plans.
And above is a chart outlining the one-month performance of 18 assets: 17 mining companies with various business models and bitcoin itself.
Among the top 50% performers, seven companies are actively pursuing AI initiatives, although only a few have reported revenues from the high-performance computing segment. GRIID and Stronghold, both in the top 50%, have not yet announced any AI-related business expansions.
GRIID had a strong rally over the past week amid rumors of a potential acquisition. Meanwhile, Stronghold announced earlier its intention to explore opportunities for selling some of its assets, including hosting and power generation capacities.
Meanwhile, most of the stocks in the bottom 50% are pure bitcoin mining operations with 100% capacities dedicated to SHA-256, including Marathon (well, not so much 100% now with the KAS mining), Riot, and CleanSpark – the three largest public mining companies by market cap. This is not exactly surprising, given bitcoin’s hashprice is again approaching all-time lows below $50/PH/s 😣
HIVE appears to be the only mining operation that has an active HPC business but whose stock is in the bottom 50% of the chart, although it still has a much higher return over the past month than major pure mining companies.
HIVE released the financial earnings for Q1 this week, revealing an increase in revenue from the HPC segment, rising about 60% from $1.1 million in Q4 to $1.8 million in Q1. It had a 10% rally on Wednesday, outperforming all other mining stocks except GRIID.
Regulation News
- North Tonawanda Residents Urge DEC to Reject Crypto Mining Company Application – Spectrum News
Hardware and Infrastructure News
- Foundry Launches Bitcoin Mining Support Hardware – TheEnergyMag
- Bitcoin Tumble Sends Hashprice Near All-time Lows – TheEnergyMag
- CoreWeave Expands AI Hosting at Core Scientific to 270MW – TheEnergyMag
- Marathon Expands to Altcoin Mining with 30 PH/s on Kaspa – TheEnergyMag
- Canaan Launches A1566I Immersion Miner with Minimal Efficiency Gains – TheEnergyMag
Corporate News
- Marathon’s BTC Mining is Heating an Entire Town in Finland – CoinTelegraph
- Greenidge Launches Modular Bitcoin Mining Container Pod X – Link
- Riot Seeks Three Bitfarms Board Seats in Bitcoin Miner Takeover Fight – Bloomberg
- Bit Digital May Sell Digital Assets to Fund GPU Expansion for AI Race – TheEnergyMag
Financial News
- Hut 8 Secures $150M from CoreWeave Investor for AI Push – TheEnergyMag
- Soluna Raises $12.5 Million, Secures Hosting for Generative AI Workloads – Link
- GRIID Rally Continues as Shares Quadruple Within Week – TheEnergyMag
Feature
- Trump’s Bitcoin Mining Gambit to Outmaneuver Biden – TheEnergyMag
- Dogecoin’s Newest ASIC Miner – The Mining Pod
- Bitcoin Mining Sector Is Attracting Growing Investor Interest Following Core Scientific Deal: JPMorgan – CoinDesk
- INTERVIEW: Bitmain’s Newest ASIC Miner – The Mining Pod
- Inside Hut 8’s AI ambitions after securing $150M in funding – Blockworks
