Publicly listed Bitcoin miners have sold more than 15,000 BTC since their treasuries peaked, cashing out to fund a pivot into AI data centers.
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Miners sell 15,000 Bitcoin as Cipher, Hyperscale fund AI pivot
Publicly listed Bitcoin miners have sold more than 15,000 BTC since their treasuries peaked, cashing out to fund a pivot into AI data centers.
Publicly listed miners have sold more than 15,000 Bitcoin since their treasuries peaked, with Cipher Digital and Hyperscale Data the latest to cash out for AI data center buildouts.
Hyperscale Data converted about 150.5 BTC into $9.6 million in the week ended Aug. 2, leaving a treasury of roughly 959 coins worth about $60.8 million, the company said in a release. Cipher Digital, which trades on Nasdaq as CIFR, posted a $267.5 million net loss in the second quarter, including a $150.5 million non-cash warrant charge, as mining revenue fell 29 percent from the prior quarter to $25 million.
The selloffs follow CoinShares data showing the weighted-average cash cost to mine one Bitcoin reached about $79,995 in the fourth quarter of 2025 while the price traded near $68,000 to $70,000, leaving miners losing an estimated $19,000 per coin. More than $70 billion in AI and high-performance computing contracts have been announced across the public mining sector, and some operators could draw as much as 70 percent of revenue from AI by the end of 2026.
Cipher, TeraWulf, MARA Holdings, Core Scientific and Hut 8 have all moved to repurpose power capacity for AI tenants. Cipher has raised $3.73 billion across three senior secured bond offerings to build its Barber Lake and Black Pearl campuses, and CEO Tyler Page said the company delivered its first HPC data center capacity ahead of schedule, with rent at Black Pearl starting two months early in August.
Hyperscale Data trims treasury to 959 BTC
Hyperscale Data, formerly Irenic Corp, has cut its holdings from a peak of more than 1,200 BTC in mid-2024. The company is using proceeds to fund U.S. facilities designed to host GPU clusters for AI training and inference, converting a volatile digital asset into physical infrastructure. The approach contrasts with MicroStrategy's accumulation strategy, which continues to buy Bitcoin, and follows Empery Digital's sale of 1,400 BTC in July at an average of $62,200, raising about $87.1 million. Bitdeer took its holdings to zero in February.
ERCOT pause clouds Cipher's 4.4-GW pipeline
Cipher disclosed an option on a 900-megawatt site called Apollo, about 25 miles from San Antonio, Texas, and said a separate bond deal reimbursed it $56.7 million while funding its Stingray campus. The land has been submitted through the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Batch Zero process. Texas Governor Greg Abbott told regulators to review data-center projects before they advance in the grid-approval queue, and ERCOT has paused its Batch Zero transmission study, adding uncertainty to Apollo and much of Cipher's 4.4-gigawatt development pipeline.
Cipher projects net operating income of $97 million this year, climbing to $686 million in 2027. Its shares fell 10.2 percent to $21.69 on Aug. 4 after the results. The sector-wide shift from Bitcoin treasuries to AI infrastructure is a bet that data center demand will generate steadier returns than coin appreciation — a bet that now hinges on grid approvals and construction execution.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
