Lekker Capital CIO Quinn Thompson argues on X that collapsing mining economics, mixed with a growing shift by public miners in direction of AI and excessive-efficiency compute, can also turn corporate BTC treasuries into a fresh source of market offer.
“A big underappreciated headwind for Bitcoin is the catastrophe that which is mining economics. The one reach this heals is thru a decline in hashrate, which is being spearheaded by the AI compute first movers like CORZ, WULF, CIFR, IREN, etc.,” Thompson wrote.
The chart Thompson shared, frames the difficulty visually. It presentations combination bitcoin holdings across important listed miners rock climbing sharply thru 2024 and 2025 sooner than rolling over in 2026. Thompson’s argument is now not that the AI pivot is bearish in structural terms.
Quite the opposite, lower hashrate and no more uneconomic competition can also enhance mining industry effectively being over time. His level is that the transition itself is costly, and that capex-heavy AI buildouts can also simply power miners to liquidate BTC that had beforehand been treated as strategic treasury.
“While necessary to long-length of time effectively being and sustainability of the network economics, it gifts a dilemma for costs within the as regards to-length of time as Bitcoin miners care for practically 80,000 Bitcoin on their steadiness sheets. As these companies pivot away from BTC mining, they 1) want capital to fund the AI buildout capex requirements and a pair of) haven’t any motive to care for any BTC on their steadiness sheet (now not that they’re going to must have sooner than both),” he argued.
Bitcoin Miners Pivot To AI
The 2025 filings and public recordsdata fabricate that argument extra concrete. Core Scientific’s fourth-quarter outcomes confirmed the industrial mix tilting away from mining and in direction of AI-associated infrastructure: self-mining earnings fell to $42.2 million from $seventy nine.9 million a year earlier, whereas colocation earnings rose to $31.3 million from $8.5 million. Management acknowledged the decline in hosted mining reflected the “persevered strategic shift” to excessive-density colocation. For fleshy-year 2025, Core generated $402.5 million of proceeds from selling digital resources and ended the year with 2,537 BTC on its steadiness sheet.
TeraWulf affords an supreme cleaner read-thru. The firm acknowledged that in 2025 it “solidified HPC web hosting as its important boost engine,” signed extra than $12.8 billion in long-length of time customer contracts, and constructed a platform with 522 crucial IT megawatts beneath contract. Yet the legacy mining industrial used to be tranquil being monetized as that buildout took shape: fourth-quarter digital asset earnings used to be $26.1 million, versus $9.7 million in HPC rent earnings, and the firm’s year-discontinue digital asset rollforward presentations 1,496 BTC mined, 1,500 BTC disposed of, and only 3 BTC left on the steadiness sheet at Dec. 31, 2025.
Cipher and IREN reward two various variations of the identical constructing. Cipher acknowledged it increased its focal level on HPC in 2025 and signed two HPC tenants for a mixed 600 MW of recordsdata center skill. It additionally sold bitcoin for roughly $214.7 million all over the year. By year-discontinue, Cipher had categorised $94.9 million of Dim Pearl mining rigs as held within the marketplace after signing a sublease to transition the positioning to an HPC tenant. IREN, towards this, has already taken the treasury dispute largely off the table: with roughly Ninety nine,900 GPUs installed or on divulge as of Dec. 31, 2025, it acknowledged it “customarily liquidate[s] the total Bitcoin we mine on a typical foundation” and therefore held no bitcoin on its steadiness sheet at year-discontinue.
MARA matters for a definite motive. It is now not but as far along as Core, TeraWulf, Cipher or IREN in converting mining sites into a fleshy AI/HPC industrial, even supposing it had deployed its first ten AI racks at Granbury by November 2025 and later launched a Starwood partnership for AI and HPC infrastructure. However MARA is the treasury heavyweight within the neighborhood, and its possess 2025 disclosures moved in Thompson’s direction: the firm acknowledged it began selling bitcoin within the 2nd half of of 2025, sold about 4,076 BTC for $413.1 million all over the year, and tranquil ended 2025 with roughly Fifty three,822 BTC.
That’s the stress in Thompson’s thesis. A miner-led shift into AI can minimize hashrate stress and enhance the long-fade economics of bitcoin mining. However the bridge from mining to AI is capital-intensive, and the 2025 filings reward that bridge is already being funded with BTC sales, miner disposals and plan conversions. For bitcoin, meaning an industry adjustment that shall be positive later can tranquil recognize like overhang now.
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $72,322.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
