New facilities can take about five years to connect, giving miners with existing energized sites a valuable head start in the AI infrastructure race.
AI could account for as much as 70% of listed Bitcoin miners’ revenue by the end of 2026, compared with 30% today, as miners increasingly transform their operations into AI and high-performance computing infrastructure businesses, according to CoinShares.
The shift is being driven by the economics of AI infrastructure and a growing shortage of suitable US data-center capacity. Vacancy has remained around 1% for three consecutive years, while about 2,060 GW of capacity is waiting for grid connections, roughly 1.6 times the country’s entire existing generating capacity.
Because miners already operate power-dense, energized facilities, they can potentially repurpose capacity for AI without facing the same development and grid hurdles as new data centers.
CoinShares’ outlook comes as crypto flows have turned sharply positive, with global digital asset products pulling in $1.65 billion over the first three trading days of the week after a $2.94 billion inflow during the previous full week.
Bitcoin led the latest flows, while Ethereum and several altcoins also attracted capital. At the macro level, sticky inflation and weakening economic indicators have left the Fed in a difficult position ahead of Warsh’s first Jackson Hole keynote.
