Bernstein: Bitcoin miners benefit from the rise of AI

The volatility of bitcoin has long shaken miners like poorly stowed chests on an old ship. When BTC plunges, margins melt, the machines turn, and the promised treasure sometimes turns to dust. Yet AI is now changing the map. Miners discover that their fortune may be lying in the megawatts already connected.

Bitcoin miners now hold the key to the power vault

Wall Street is starting to look at bitcoin miners with radically different eyes. According to Bernstein, these players have an advantage that has become rare: immediate access to massive electrical power. In fact, groups specializing in AI are looking less for buildings than for quickly available megawatts.

Over the past two years, miners have signed seventeen deals worth over $110 billion. These contracts concern around six gigawatts of energy capacity intended for players like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia and CoreWeave. This power represents almost 10% of the AI ​​data centers currently under construction in the United States.

According to Bernsteinthis represents almost 10% of AI data centers currently under construction in the United States.

Jensen Huang sets the industrial scene:

Bitcoin miners remain best positioned to solve the problem of delay in access to computing power. Their planned energy portfolio reaches 30 gigawatts and their operational experience allows them to quickly deliver infrastructure ready to accommodate the equipment.

Source: Decrypt / Nvidia

AI turns old mining farms into recurring chests

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

Hyperscalers want sites that are quick to use, because building a data center often takes years. The miners already own the land, connections and electrical posts. Bernstein therefore forecasts an increase in AI revenues from $1.2 billion in 2026 to $10.7 billion in 2030.

TeraWulf embodies this shift with 3.8 GW of energy portfolio. Bernstein is targeting $1.7 billion in AI revenue for the company in 2030. Cipher Digital has 495 MW under contract and an order book of $11.4 billion. The bitcoin remains in the room, but the electricity now holds the cash register.

Yesterday BTC hunters, today guardians of digital treasure

This mutation does not guarantee a general victory. Bernstein points out serious risks: customer concentration, heavy financing and network authorizations. Fluidstack represents approximately 91% of TeraWulf's contracted revenue. At Cipher, AWS weighs heavily in the commercial backlog. Then, some electricity pipelines are still waiting for the green light from network managers.

However, arbitration remains powerful. A megawatt dedicated to bitcoin is worth much less than a megawatt converted to data center-grade AI infrastructure. Colocation contracts, often signed over 10 to 25 years, also provide rare stability in mining.

Mining Grid summarizes this need 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 that is perfectly aligned with the fundamentals of the global blockchain network.

Source: Mining Grid

The numbers hidden in the trunk

• 17 AI agreements signed by minors in two years;
• $110 billion committed to these energy contracts;
• 6 GW reserved for hyperscalers and neocloud operators;
• 10.7 billion in AI revenue projected 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 is a reminder that BTC remains a fiercely volatile asset. But for some miners, AI opens a second vault, less exposed to market storms.