🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Large spot bitcoin ETF inflows are helping offset miner selling

• Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) took in nearly US$1 billion for the week. BlackRock’s IBIT drew US$612 million, which leaves much of that demand concentrated in one fund 1.
• Publicly listed mining groups are under margin pressure. The weighted average cash cost to produce one bitcoin reached about US$79,995 in Q4 2025, said CoinShares, a digital-asset investment research firm 2.
• That creates a push and pull in the market. ETF buying supports demand, while miners may need to sell holdings to cover operating costs as margins narrow 2.

Some bitcoin miners are shifting toward AI infrastructure

• Tighter economics are speeding up a move into high-performance computing (HPC), which provides large-scale computing power, and AI infrastructure 3.
• Some firms are repurposing power and cooling infrastructure for AI workloads. Listed miners could get as much as 70% of revenue from AI by year-end, up from about 30% now, said CoinShares 2.
• Valuations are moving with that shift. Enterprise value-to-next-12-month sales (EV/NTM sales) stands at 12.3x for miners with secured HPC contracts and 5.9x for pure-play bitcoin miners, said CoinShares 2.
• These companies are turning from simple bitcoin price bets into broader infrastructure businesses chasing part of the AI data center market 3.