Why bitcoin miners are becoming power companies [Crypto Insight]

An intriguing divergence has emerged in the virtual asset market: bitcoin miners' share prices have begun to decouple from the price of bitcoin itself. The CoinShares Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) posted a year-to-date return of roughly 45 percent as of Friday's closing price in the United States, while bitcoin fell about 26.7 percent over the same period.

One key reason behind this paradox — mining stocks rising even as bitcoin weakens — is that the market has begun to revalue mining companies not merely as bitcoin producers but as operators of power and AI computing infrastructure.

Mining companies hold large-scale power sites with transmission and distribution equipment, advanced cooling systems and the operational know-how to run facilities around the clock. These are precisely the conditions required to operate AI data centers. At a time when connecting a new data center to the power grid can take years, mining infrastructure that is already grid-connected offers a clear head start as demand for AI computing surges. Not every mining facility can be converted directly into an AI data center — the additional investment required per MW exceeds ten times the cost of a mining facility, covering redundant networks, power backup and cooling architecture. Even so, having secured power and sites in advance gives mining companies a strong competitive edge.

Global mining companies are already acting on this, expanding into AI data centers while continuing to mine. MARA Holdings launched a joint data center development platform in February with Starwood Capital, which manages $125 billion in assets, designing its campuses to flexibly allocate capacity between mining and AI computing depending on power conditions and customer demand. The strategy keeps mining as the core foundation while layering AI and high-performance computing on top.

Mining equipment can also generate revenue in its own right. Bitcoin miner Riot secured roughly $21 million in power credits in the first quarter of this year alone by flexibly adjusting its mining operations, cutting electricity costs, and signed a long-term contract to lease data center capacity to chipmaker AMD, entering the AI data center leasing business. Fellow miner CleanSpark demonstrated the grid-management potential of mining equipment last December when, at the request of the Tennessee Valley Authority, it slashed power consumption across 11 facilities within 10 minutes.

Mining companies thus run two revenue streams — mining and AI data center leasing — on a single power infrastructure. Mining, with its ability to scale operations up or down based on power conditions, serves as a flexible source of cash flow, while long-term AI data center leases add stable recurring income.

The lessons from these global examples are clear for Korea. Competing in AI infrastructure depends not just on securing GPUs but on power, grid connectivity, sites and the operational capacity to run large-scale facilities over the long term. Bitplanet views mining both as a means of accumulating bitcoin and as a process of building low-cost power and computing infrastructure capabilities. Mining and AI data centers are monetization paths that operate together on a single power infrastructure, and the company is pursuing a strategy that designs both businesses in parallel.

The new gold rush of the AI era lies in bitcoin and the power and computing infrastructure used to mine it. Bitcoin mining is evolving into an industry that not only secures bitcoin as a next-generation reserve asset but also builds AI infrastructure competitiveness along the way.