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VanEck: Bitcoin Miners’ Debt Surges Sixfold Amid AI and Hashrate Arms Race
- Debt across Bitcoin miners has surged from US$2.1 billion to US$12.7 billion in one year, as operators race to upgrade fleets and integrate high-performance computing HPC and AI capacity.
- Miners are using debt to maintain hashrate share against the “melting ice cube problem” of depreciating older rigs, while also competing with AI workloads for power and data center space.
- The pivot to AI and HPC provides miners with more predictable cash flows via multi-year contracts, allowing them to tap debt markets.
Debt across Bitcoin miners has surged from US$2.1 billion (AU$3.26 billion) to US$12.7 billion (AU$19.69 billion) in a year as operators race to upgrade fleets and add high-performance computing and AI capacity, according to VanEck’s October ChainCheck.
VanEck analysts Nathan Frankovitz and Matthew Sigel stated that miners are leveraging up to protect hashrate share amid pricier capital and competition for power and datacenter space from AI workloads.
The analysts call mining fleets a “melting ice cube” since older rigs lose economic value as newer, more efficient models ship. With equity financing less attractive, they argue companies are relying more on debt even though cash generation remains tied to Bitcoin’s price.
Bitcoin mining is a challenging business; without continued investment in the latest ASICs, a miner’s share of the global hash rate deteriorates, resulting in a reduced pro rata share of the finite number of Bitcoin awarded daily. We refer to this dynamic as “the melting ice cube problem”. Historically, miners relied on equity markets, not debt, to fund these steep Capex costs.
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Bitcoin Miners Pivoting To AI For Cash
Recent transactions illustrate the trend. For instance, Bitfarms recently raised US$588 million (AU$911 million) via convertible notes to fund HPC and AI buildouts across North America. The firm has seen its stock surge by over 20%. The same happened for TeraWulf, which outlined a proposed US$3.2 billion (AU$4.96 billion) senior secured notes deal to expand its Lake Mariner facility in New York.
Sydney-headquartered IREN also completed a US$1 billion (AU$1.55 billion) convertible notes sale for operations and new projects.
Overall, the pivot to AI comes from the rising costs, growing competition, and increasing complexity of running Bitcoin mining as a long-term business. VanEck notes:
Miners have progressively pivoted greater amounts of power from mining Bitcoin to supporting the energy-hungry AI/HPC data center business. In doing so, miners have secured more predictable cash flows backed by multi-year contracts. The relative predictability of these cash flows has enabled miners to tap into debt markets, diversifying their revenues from Bitcoin’s speculative and cyclical prices and lowering their overall cost of capital.
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Author
José Oramas
José is a journalist and translator with a keen interest in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
