Bitcoin miners set to capture AI compute and storage revenue

CoinShares projects that public bitcoin miners will derive about 80% of their revenue from AI compute and storage workloads by the end of the year. The firm reported roughly 20 disclosed AI co-location contracts since April 2024 with a combined value near $85 billion.

The figures were presented during a webcast hosted by Kirsten Chang. Matthew Kimmell, an investment strategist at CoinShares, described large miners as already operating the infrastructure AI customers require: gigawatt-scale data centers, dedicated power feeds and industrial cooling systems. He reported that eight of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners operate about two gigawatts of capacity across roughly 50 sites, with more than five gigawatts under construction and a further 12 projects in disclosed pipeline stages.

Most of the AI business comes through multi-year co-location agreements. CoinShares said typical contracts run five to 15 years, with some extending to 25 years. The disclosed agreements involve long-term commitments by AI operators to lease space, power and hosting services from miners.

Kimmell noted miners can scale power consumption up or down without altering existing bitcoin contracts. That flexibility enables miners to buy otherwise unused electricity, including stranded solar, wind and hydro resources, and to deploy compute capacity where customers request it. He called the commercial opportunity “the great monetization of electrons.”

CoinShares also identified risks tied to the buildout. Those include counterparty risk in long-term contracts, geographic concentration of capacity-particularly in Texas-and potential construction delays. The firm highlighted grid exposure in U.S. regions where many data centers and mines cluster.

The webcast placed the mining-AI trend in broader market context. Bitcoin traded near its 200-week moving average of about $65,000, a level CoinShares said has previously acted as a cycle low and an accumulation range for long-term holders. Digital asset exchange-traded products recorded about $260 million in outflows year-to-date, primarily tied to bitcoin, and first-quarter filings showed the largest quarterly reduction in U.S. bitcoin ETF holdings since those products began in January 2024. CoinShares reported that roughly 95% of selling came from hedge funds and brokerages rather than long-term holders.

Institutional adoption of bitcoin remains limited in size but broad in type. Most institutional allocators hold 1% or less of portfolios in bitcoin, and allocations now include pensions, sovereign wealth funds and other institutional categories. In a live webcast poll, 62% of attendees said they already had exposure to AI infrastructure, while 27% reported no exposure to related themes.

Kimmell said miners can act as flexible power buyers and provide fast-deploy compute and secure facilities for large AI deployments, but he cautioned that the timing of projects and counterparty performance will determine how much of the contracted revenue ultimately materializes.