{"id":749826,"date":"2026-08-26T01:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T01:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/749826\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T01:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T01:52:09","slug":"iconic-bitcoin-mine-pivots-to-ai-as-industry-turns-back-on-crypto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/749826\/","title":{"rendered":"Iconic Bitcoin mine pivots to AI as industry turns back on crypto"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Like AI systems, Bitcoin relies on vast networks of powerful computers housed in data centres.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Because Bitcoin operates without a central authority, these computers verify transactions and are rewarded with newly-created digital coins.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But the rewards have reduced and the value of coins has dropped since last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One bitcoin was worth about $124,000 (\u00a391,000) at its peak in October 2025, but has since fallen sharply.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">More recently, it has rallied to around $80,000 &#8211; meaning it is up almost 30% so far in August.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But, for companies that have already made the change, even that may not be enough to get them to return to the crypto industry, because the switch of use &#8211; once made &#8211; is expensive to undo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Industry analysts say Bitcoin mining companies have been pivoting to AI because they have years of experience in finding cheap electricity and efficiently running large data centres.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">TerraWulf, Ionic Digital, Core Scientific, Iris Energy, Bitdeer, Riot Platforms and Hut 8 are just some of the companies increasingly diverting investment and infrastructure from bitcoin mining towards AI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Riot Platforms signed a $9bn, 20-year compute deal with Anthropic earlier this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like AI systems, Bitcoin relies on vast networks of powerful computers housed in data centres. Because Bitcoin operates&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-749826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}