Written by: Cathy
Mining one Bitcoin costs $87,000. Selling it, the market only gives you $67,000.
For every coin mined, a net loss of twenty thousand dollars. Not a loss on fees, not a loss on electricity cost fluctuations, but a solid, out-of-pocket twenty thousand dollars lost for every Bitcoin produced. This is the reality of March 2026. Data from both Glassnode and MacroMicro point to the same conclusion: at current prices, Bitcoin mining is a money-losing business.
But the miners aren't sitting idly by waiting to die. They made a choice that surprised the entire market—stop mining and sell the electricity to AI.
To be precise, it's not "stop mining" entirely, but rather liquidating their Bitcoin treasuries and pouring all capital into AI data centers, relegating mining to a side business.
Since Bitcoin turned downward from its all-time high of $126,000 in October 2025, publicly listed mining companies have collectively sold over 15,000 Bitcoins. This isn't sporadic cashing out; it's an organized, strategic large-scale retreat.
Miners Collective Sell-Off: Where Did 15,000 BTC Go?
Core Scientific was the earliest and most decisive to act.
In January 2026, it sold approximately 1,900 Bitcoins in one go, cashing out $175 million. It plans to liquidate the remainder in Q1. This once-bankrupt and reorganized mining company is now converting its Texas mining sites into high-density AI hosting facilities, aiming to allocate its total power capacity of 1.3GW entirely to AI.
MARA was even more drastic. The company famous for "never selling coins" quietly changed its treasury policy in its 10-K annual report for March 2026—all 53,822 Bitcoins were authorized for sale. Valued at nearly $4 billion at the time, this stash of chips overnight went from "strategic reserve" to "deployable capital." Immediately after, MARA signed a joint venture agreement with Starwood Capital to deliver 1GW of AI data center capacity.
The most surprising was Cango. The predecessor of this company was a Chinese auto finance platform that only entered Bitcoin mining in late 2024. Yet, by February 2026, it had sold 4,451 Bitcoins—60% of its reserves—cashing out $305 million to pay off debt and fund its AI transition. It even brought in former Zoom executive Jack Jin as CTO for its AI business, planning to install containerized GPU computing nodes in its global mining farms. A company that did auto financing transformed into a miner within two years, and then from a miner into an AI inference service provider—this kind of cross-industry speed is only seen in the crypto world.
Bitdeer's choice was more like a calculated move. It cleared its own Bitcoin holdings in February. Founder Jihan Wu's response was straightforward: zero holdings don't mean they will stay zero forever; liquidity is needed now to seize the window for acquiring power and land. Unlike other mining companies, while liquidating, Bitdeer slammed on the accelerator—Bitcoin production in January skyrocketed 430% year-over-year, with self-operated hashrate reaching 63.2 EH/s, surpassing MARA to become the listed mining company with the largest self-operated hashrate globally. Clearing the coins on the books bought a massive expansion in hashrate and infrastructure. There's the decisiveness of "cutting the wrist like a brave warrior" and the ambition of "loading the ammunition."
The Same Electricity is Worth 10x More for AI
Why are miners selling off so uniformly? Because after doing the math, the answer is too obvious.
Mining loses money, but mining companies possess one thing the whole world is scrambling for: powered land.
After the 2024 halving, Bitcoin mining profit margins were compressed from over 90% at their peak to the break-even line. But during the same period, AI's demand for power and data centers grew almost explosively. According to MarketsandMarkets predictions, the global AI inference market will grow from approximately $106 billion in 2025 to nearly $255 billion by 2030.
Morgan Stanley did the math: shifting 1 megawatt of power from mining to AI hosting can yield a valuation premium of over 10 times.
This is no exaggeration. AI hosting contracts are typically long-term agreements of 10 to 15 years, with clients being investment-grade giants like Microsoft and Meta, offering stable and predictable cash flow. In contrast, mining income depends entirely on the coin price—and the coin price, you know how that is.
Wall Street has voted with real money. Morgan Stanley extended a $500 million credit line to Core Scientific, with provisions to increase it to $1 billion. This isn't a loan to a "crypto company"; it's a backing of credit for a "digital infrastructure company." TeraWulf and Cipher Mining were rated "Overweight" by Morgan Stanley due to their successful hybrid models, while MARA, which once stubbornly held onto Bitcoin, was once downgraded for being overexposed to coin price risk.
The signal from the capital market is crystal clear: in Wall Street's eyes, the value of these companies no longer determined by how much Bitcoin they hold, but by how much power they control.
On-Chain Metrics Say a Bottom Might Be Near
Miners are collectively dumping, and the market is wailing. But if you look at on-chain data, you'll find a set of very interesting signals.
The Hash Ribbon has been inverted since the end of November 2025. By February 2026, it had lasted a full three months—one of the longest miner capitulation periods in history. The last time a similar combination of signals appeared was in December 2022, when Bitcoin bottomed at $15,500. As of early March, the 30-day moving average is approaching above the 60-day moving average, with a recovery signal about to trigger.
The MVRV Z-Score remained between 0.43 and 0.49 in early March. This indicator measures the deviation of the market price from the "realized value." Historically, when the Z-Score falls into the 0 to 1 range, it has almost always corresponded to a strategic accumulation window.
The Puell Multiple dropped to around 0.6, meaning miners' daily revenue has been compressed to about 60% of the annual average. It's not far from the 0.3 seen at the bottom of the 2022 bear market; miners' profit margins are being squeezed to historic lows.
The most extreme signal comes from sentiment. During the "Bitcoin Polar Vortex" in February, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index once fell to 5. On February 5th, the single-day entity-adjusted realized loss set a historical record of $3.2 billion.
Four independent indicators flashing red simultaneously—the last time this happened, Bitcoin was drawing a bottom.
Miners Selling Coins is Actually Bullish?
This is the most counterintuitive part of the whole story.
In the past, miner selling was always seen as a bearish signal—these were the "native sellers" of Bitcoin; they mined and sold, constituting sustained selling pressure on the market. But the nature of the 2026 sell-off is completely different: these mining companies are selling Bitcoin to go earn dollar revenue from AI.
Think about what this means. Previously, Core Scientific had to sell hundreds of Bitcoins every month to pay electricity and operational costs. Now it has long-term contracts signed with Microsoft and credit lines from Morgan Stanley. Although it still plans to liquidate most of its remaining Bitcoin holdings (holding about 2,537 by year-end, having sold the majority), this is no longer a passive "sell to survive" but an active liquidation, concentrating funds into AI infrastructure. Once MARA's joint venture project with Starwood lands, the dollar cash flow generated by that 1 GW data center will be enough to cover all costs.
In other words, mining companies transitioning to AI are going from being structural sellers of Bitcoin to neutral or even potential buyers. The largest group of "natural shorts" in the market is permanently exiting.
And Bitcoin mining itself hasn't disappeared; it just exists in a different form. MARA's hybrid model has shown the way: mine when electricity prices are low, switch to GPU computing during peak AI demand. Bitcoin becomes a "flexible load" and "insurance mechanism" for the grid; AI is responsible for making money, mining is responsible for providing a safety net.
Summary
In 2025, the Bitcoin network hashrate just broke the 1 Zetahash milestone. In the short term, some mining farms transitioning to AI will indeed slow hashrate growth—for example, Cango took 31% of its hashrate offline for upgrades. But this is actually a benign capacity clearance: inefficient miners exit, the remaining players are more efficient and focused, and network security increases rather than decreases.
This isn't miner capitulation; it's mining industry evolution.
When mining becomes a side business and AI becomes the main business, Bitcoin loses a group of miners forced to sell coins but gains a healthier supply structure.
The miners' Bitcoin is sold out, but the electricity remains.
