📰 The story of mining companies pivoting to AI has suddenly become a lot less appealing. MARA is down nearly 64% over the past year, and Cipher’s shares fell as much as 15% intraday after it raised money through a bond offering. The market is starting to recalculate: are these miners really making a transition, or just borrowing to stay afloat?
🔥 The reason Cipher is issuing up to $1 billion in convertible notes this time around isn’t complicated. The budget for the Barber Lake data center has risen from $2.157 billion to between $2.941 billion and $2.966 billion—an increase of more than 36%. The project is over budget, a major customer has changed the design, and the company has to front the money. Naturally, investors are getting nervous.
💡 The bigger problem is that the industry isn’t short on grand plans—it’s short on cash and the ability to deliver. Miners face a short-term funding gap of about $50 billion to complete the AI infrastructure they’ve already announced. And the computing capacity actually delivered so far is only around 25% of the capacity contracted for lease. There are plenty of plans on paper, but far fewer data centers actually being delivered.
⚠️ Their core business can’t keep replenishing their cash, either. Binance Pool announced that it would shut down related services starting November 10, while the weighted average cash cost for publicly listed miners to mine one BTC is still about $75,500 in the second quarter of 2026. Miners are under pressure from mining while also having to raise money for AI projects. Times are certainly tough.
👀 But Bitdeer has taken a decisive approach: in February this year, it sold off all of its self-mined BTC, and it has since sold every newly mined coin too, concentrating its cash on AI infrastructure. The first phase of its 180-megawatt data center in Tydal, Norway, is targeted for delivery this December, and its AI cloud business had about $69 million in annual recurring revenue in April. The market is no longer looking only at power and contracts. The real question is: who can deliver the data centers on time?
What do you think will determine the outcome of miners’ AI pivot: their ability to raise money, or their ability to deliver?
#矿企转型 #AI算力 #比特币挖矿 #CryptoMarket
🔥 The reason Cipher is issuing up to $1 billion in convertible notes this time around isn’t complicated. The budget for the Barber Lake data center has risen from $2.157 billion to between $2.941 billion and $2.966 billion—an increase of more than 36%. The project is over budget, a major customer has changed the design, and the company has to front the money. Naturally, investors are getting nervous.
💡 The bigger problem is that the industry isn’t short on grand plans—it’s short on cash and the ability to deliver. Miners face a short-term funding gap of about $50 billion to complete the AI infrastructure they’ve already announced. And the computing capacity actually delivered so far is only around 25% of the capacity contracted for lease. There are plenty of plans on paper, but far fewer data centers actually being delivered.
⚠️ Their core business can’t keep replenishing their cash, either. Binance Pool announced that it would shut down related services starting November 10, while the weighted average cash cost for publicly listed miners to mine one BTC is still about $75,500 in the second quarter of 2026. Miners are under pressure from mining while also having to raise money for AI projects. Times are certainly tough.
👀 But Bitdeer has taken a decisive approach: in February this year, it sold off all of its self-mined BTC, and it has since sold every newly mined coin too, concentrating its cash on AI infrastructure. The first phase of its 180-megawatt data center in Tydal, Norway, is targeted for delivery this December, and its AI cloud business had about $69 million in annual recurring revenue in April. The market is no longer looking only at power and contracts. The real question is: who can deliver the data centers on time?
What do you think will determine the outcome of miners’ AI pivot: their ability to raise money, or their ability to deliver?
#矿企转型 #AI算力 #比特币挖矿 #CryptoMarket