VanEck: Bitcoin miners are turning into AI power providers — and still trade at a discount

Bitcoin miners are no longer just block producers; they’re increasingly power brokers. VanEck’s Matthew Sigel told CNBC on Wednesday that listed miners have been rapidly redirecting capacity toward artificial intelligence workloads and, on a market-cap-per-megawatt basis, still change hands at a meaningful discount to traditional data-center peers. That valuation spread is the single variable to watch.

The setup is straightforward: AI has created a step-change in electricity consumption while power supply in many regions remains tight. Years of underbuild mean multiple overlapping demand shocks are hitting the grid at once. Miners were early to realize the asset they had wasn’t only hash rate — it was control over power, interconnects, and sites that can be retooled for high-performance computing.

You can see the thesis in capital allocation. Core Scientific plans to sell the majority of its bitcoin holdings this year to expand AI and high-performance computing operations. That’s a decisive shift away from a pure “mine-and-HODL” posture toward contracted, fiat-revenue businesses. Riot Platforms has telegraphed a similar evolution, saying 2025 marked a defining turn as it opened up a nearly two-gigawatt power portfolio for high-demand data-center infrastructure, positioning the company for different cash-flow dynamics.

Market pricing has started to acknowledge the pivot, but not uniformly. Over the past 12 months, Core Scientific shares are up 90% and Riot is 91% higher, while MARA Holdings is down 35% amid higher mining costs and declining block production that pressured its 2025 results. The dispersion reflects execution risk: not every megawatt is created equal. AI tenants want low-latency fiber, robust redundancy, liquid cooling or advanced air systems, and firm (not just interruptible) power. Some mining campuses can flip that switch quickly; others face hefty upgrade capex, permitting friction, or grid constraints that blunt returns.

Sigel framed Bitcoin through its grid footprint: pivoting capacity can lower the company’s cost of capital versus relying on volatile block rewards. The trade-off is real. Long-term AI/HPC contracts can stabilize cash flows, but they cap upside if bitcoin’s price and transaction fees spike. Core’s decision to liquidate most of its BTC treasury underscores that rebalancing from convex crypto optionality toward steadier infrastructure economics. Investors will likely reward miners that prove they can layer contracted revenue on top of opportunistic demand response — without losing the ability to capture mining cycles.

VanEck has been leaning into this intersection via its NODE ETF, which targets long-term capital appreciation by investing in companies and instruments meaningfully tied to the on-chain economy. NODE is up over 30% since inception and, per VanEck’s site, holds $56 million in net assets after launching last May. Sigel noted the firm has largely rotated away from altcoins toward equities where crypto meets real-world cash generation — precisely where miners-turned-data-center operators sit.

My read: the market-cap-per-megawatt gap can close, but it won’t be automatic. Watch three things: 1) contract mix and pricing for AI/HPC tenants versus pure self-mining, 2) interconnection quality and upgrade timelines at each site, and 3) treasury policy — whether BTC sales fund growth or dilute exposure to future on-chain fee cycles. The miners that thread that needle could earn a re-rating toward data-center comps; the rest remain tied to hash economics and grid volatility.