Bitcoin Miners Using AI as a Bear Market Escape Plan Just Got a New Rival in Elon Musk

Why It Matters

Control of large‑scale electricity, not just chips, will determine which players dominate the booming AI compute market, affecting miner profitability and Bitcoin network security.

Key Takeaways

• SpaceX offers Anthropic 220k GPUs, 300 MW at Colossus 1.
• Bitcoin miners could derive 70% of revenue from AI by year‑end.
• Miners with AI contracts trade at EV/12‑month sales 12.3× vs 5.9×.
• US data‑center power demand may rise to 12% of grid by 2028.
• Musk’s compute asset adds deep‑pocketed rival to miners’ AI push.

Pulse Analysis

Bitcoin miners have been scrambling to reinvent themselves as AI‑infrastructure providers after the 2024 halving slashed block rewards and pushed hashprice to a five‑year low of roughly $29 per petahash‑second per day. With traditional mining margins under pressure, firms like TeraWulf and Core Scientific are leveraging their secured power contracts and industrial‑scale sites to offer colocation and GPU services, a shift that CoinShares says could generate up to 70% of their revenue from AI by the end of 2026. This pivot underscores a broader industry trend: the real bottleneck for AI workloads is not chip supply but reliable, high‑density electricity.

SpaceX’s recent agreement with Anthropic to tap the full compute power of the Colossus 1 facility in Memphis adds a heavyweight competitor to the miners’ AI arena. The partnership unlocks over 220,000 Nvidia processors and 300 MW of capacity, instantly doubling Anthropic’s Claude Code limits and removing usage caps for premium users. By monetizing an existing AI cluster, SpaceX demonstrates how deep‑pocketed tech platforms can convert idle power assets into revenue streams, challenging miners who rely on legacy infrastructure and slower grid interconnection timelines. Analysts note that the U.S. could face a 50‑gigawatt data‑center power deficit by 2028, making the ability to secure grid access a decisive advantage.

The competitive dynamics are already reflected in market valuations. Miners with confirmed AI contracts trade at enterprise‑value‑to‑next‑12‑month sales multiples of roughly 12.3×, more than double the 5.9× multiple for pure‑play Bitcoin miners. As hyperscalers pour an estimated $650 billion into AI‑related capex this year, the demand for power‑rich sites will only intensify, potentially reshaping the Bitcoin network’s security model if mining revenue continues to shift away from block rewards. Elon Musk’s involvement, through SpaceX’s Colossus assets, adds a new layer of capital and technological depth, signaling that the race for AI compute will be decided as much by electricity access as by algorithmic innovation.