Key Points
- Bitcoin miners have seen a surge in investor interest following Core Scientific’s AI hosting deal.
- The aggregate market cap of 14 tracked bitcoin miners increased by 22% or $4 billion after the announcement.
Bitcoin miners have experienced a significant increase in investor attention over the past fortnight. This surge in interest is linked to the recent announcement that Core Scientific will provide hosting for GPUs for artificial intelligence cloud provider CoreWeave.
Impact of Core Scientific Announcement
According to analysts Reginald L. Smith and Charles Pearce, the combined market cap of the 14 bitcoin miners they monitor has grown by 22%, or $4 billion, since the Core Scientific news. In early June, Core Scientific, a North American bitcoin mining and hosting services provider, revealed it had entered into a series of 12-year contracts with AI Hyperscaler CoreWeave.
The rise in the aggregate market cap of bitcoin miners is attributed to a growing recognition of their facilities’ potential to serve as AI GPU hosting centers. The analysts noted that the Core Scientific announcement “validates and will accelerate miners diversifying into High Performance Computing (HPC) programs.”
Bitcoin Miners and AI Opportunities
Bitcoin miners, having the necessary data center facilities already in place, are well-positioned to leverage the emerging opportunity to support AI developments through HPC hosting centers. The analysts highlighted that it can take more than five years to build a data center from the ground up today. They suggested that accelerating access to power by 3-4 years could yield between $105 million to $140 million per MW for a hyperscaler.
Iris Energy (IREN), an operator of facilities powered solely by renewable energy for bitcoin mining and AI cloud computing services, is well-placed to benefit from the growing demand for AI-focused data centers. However, the analysts expressed surprise that Riot Platforms, a bitcoin miner with ample power capacity, has shown little interest in HPC, despite the increasing demand for AI-related data centers.
