Riot Platforms sells 9,665 BTC in H1 as mining economics collapse

Riot Platforms sold 9,665 BTC in H1 2026, including 4,300 in Q2, to fund its AI data center pivot as mining economics deteriorate.

Miners with high-performance computing contracts trade at 12.3 times enterprise value versus 5.9 times for pure-play bitcoin miners, according to CoinShares' first-quarter mining report.

The disposals cut Riot's treasury from 15,680 to 11,380 BTC, roughly 27 percent of holdings in a single quarter, after Q2 mining revenue fell 19.3 percent on rising electricity costs and record-low hashprice. Bitcoin trades near $63,500 while industry models put the average market-wide cost of mining a coin at $76,000 to $78,000, with hashprice at $30 to $35 per PH/s per day.

The pivot extends beyond Riot. Bernstein estimates data center contracts between Bitcoin miners and AI or cloud companies now exceed $135 billion, with IREN signing a $9.7 billion agreement with Microsoft and Hut 8 finalizing a $7 billion contract with Google-backed partners. MARA Holdings, Core Scientific and Bitdeer have all liquidated part or all of their crypto reserves to fund AI infrastructure.

AI contracts reprice miner valuations

On 10 August, Riot signed a 20-year agreement worth about $9.1 billion to lease 191 megawatts of data center capacity at its Rockdale, Texas facility to an AI company, and its shares jumped more than 25 percent in after-hours trading. The company has secured 241 MW of contracted critical IT capacity at Rockdale representing $9.8 billion in long-term contracted revenue, with a Corsicana campus under a non-binding letter of intent for up to 1 GW.

The market has rewarded the pivot. Riot shares have climbed from around $3 to $20 over the past four years and are up 58 percent year to date. TeraWulf, which operates 102 MW of revenue-generating critical IT capacity at Lake Mariner in New York and controls a pipeline of roughly 2.1 GW across five sites, is up 53 percent year to date. Cipher Mining is up 25 percent year to date.

The divergence is stark for laggards. MARA Holdings, which has been slower to pivot toward AI, fell 40 percent over the past year while holding a bitcoin treasury of 35,577 BTC.

The network hashrate has dropped to 900 exahash per second from 1.14 zettahash per second, a decline of about 21 percent, as unprofitable miners turn off machines. Hashprice fell from $63 per PH/s in July last year to current levels of $30 to $35.

The bull case for pure-play mining rests on a Bitcoin recovery. CoinShares estimates a return to the $126,000 all-time high could lift hashprice back to around $59 per PH/s, substantially improving mining economics. Until then, the sector's largest operators are converting their most liquid asset — Bitcoin — into contracted AI revenue.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.