Bitcoin miners are betting on AI over crypto

Summary

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The Indicator from Planet Money

Episode Title: Bitcoin Miners Are Betting on AI Over Crypto
Date: December 10, 2025
Hosts: Darren Woods & Stephen Besarha

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Episode Overview

This episode explores a major transition underway in the world of bitcoin mining: as cryptocurrency prices fall and the artificial intelligence (AI) boom gathers steam, many large bitcoin mining companies are shifting their focus from mining crypto to operating data centers for AI. Through interviews with industry leaders, the hosts unpack the drivers behind this shift, the strategic implications for these "miners," and how the change fits into broader trends in energy use and technology.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Evolution of Bitcoin Mining

• Technological and Scale Shift:
  • Once achievable by individuals ("in a hotel room with a bunch of servers all, like, duct taped together"), bitcoin mining has evolved into an industry dominated by companies operating massive data centers.
  • [02:40] Ben Gagnon, CEO of Bitfarms: "We had four co-founders, two of them from Argentina who were actually mining bitcoin and ether in a small Argentinian hotel."
• Market Scale:
  • Crypto mining was a multi-billion dollar market but faces contraction as profit margins tighten and competitive pressures mount.
  • [03:10] Stephen Besarha: "Different estimates put the market size for crypto crypto mining last year at around one and a half to over $2 billion."

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2. Pivot to AI Data Centers

• AI as a 'Great Disruptor':
  • Mining companies are moving to AI because AI workloads also demand powerful computers and huge amounts of energy, similar to crypto mining.
  • [01:00] Darren Woods: "Those companies are shifting away from bitcoin mining to a new technology... They're switching to AI."
• Bitfarms' Example:
  • Bitfarms is aggressively scaling down its bitcoin mining business, selling off sites, and preparing to wind down mining operations over the next year or two.
  • [03:38] Stephen Besarha: "What is the future of bitcoin mining at bitfarm?"
  • [03:51] Ben Gagnon: "We've sold off a number of sites. Likely, over the next year or two, the bitcoin mining business is going to completely wind up."
• Rebranding As Energy & Infrastructure Providers:
  • Mining companies are reframing themselves as energy and infrastructure firms, leveraging their access to cheap or plentiful energy—the true bottleneck for both industries.
  • [04:31] Ben Gagnon: "The energy is the asset. The energy is where all the value is."

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3. The Energy Equation

• Energy as the Core Asset:
  • Both AI and bitcoin consume massive energy, straining power supplies and driving up prices. While mining companies do not generate energy, they secure valuable long-term supply agreements.
  • [04:49] Ben Gagnon: "Yeah. Call us an energy and infrastructure company. What we solve is the bottleneck on energy."
• Environmental and Economic Concerns:
  • The surge in demand from both AI and crypto is leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions and is pushing power companies to expand capacity.
  • [05:06] Darren Woods: "Now, we should mention that both bitcoin and AI use massive amounts of energy. That's driving up electricity prices... And we know that is not good for the climate."

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4. Why AI is More Attractive

• Steady Revenue vs. Volatility:
  • Unlike bitcoin, which requires enduring extreme price swings, AI workloads promise more consistent revenue, higher margins, and sustainable growth—key for long-term business planning.
  • [05:52] Ben Gagnon: "Bitcoin mining is so volatile that it's really hard to forecast how you want to grow the company over the next even two years."
  • [06:13] Ben Gagnon: "You can move over to a business that is, you know, not volatile... has higher revenues, higher margins, higher cash flows."
  • [06:24] Stephen Besarha (joking): "Imagine a lot better for your blood pressure."

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5. Identity and Belief in Bitcoin

• Bitfarms’ Leadership Still Believes:
  • Despite the shift, Ben Gagnon and his team remain committed "bitcoiners"—personally investing in the currency—but feel the company's future lies elsewhere.
  • [06:45] Ben Gagnon: "We're all bitcoiners here at this company. We all believe in bitcoin. We all own bitcoin. So that's not a decision that anyone made lightly."
• Reconciling Belief and Business:
  • Gagnon argues there is no conflict between personal belief in bitcoin and the company's strategic pivot.
  • [07:08] Ben Gagnon: "You can believe in bitcoin and it can also not be the right thing for you or the company to do... Doesn't mean I'm selling my bitcoin... but it just means that there's a better opportunity for the company itself."

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6. Not Everyone is Abandoning Crypto Immediately

• Iron (Iren): Dual Strategy
  • Iron (referred to as "Iron" or "Iren"), an Australian company, was never solely a bitcoin miner—its baseline strategy has been to leverage advanced data centers for whatever tasks are most profitable at any given time.
  • [07:38] Kent Draper, Chief Commercial Officer: "Bitcoin mining for us today is extremely cash flow generative."
• Flexible Business Model:
  • Iron is slowly transitioning to AI but is keeping options open to maximize returns as new technologies emerge.
  • [08:19] Kent Draper: "Historically, that was bitcoin mining."
  • [08:51] Kent Draper: "If you rewind, even five years ago, I mean, AI as it is today was a twinkle in the eye of a bunch of R and D people... So if you fast forward 10 years from now, who knows what the use cases could be?"
  • [09:22] Kent Draper: "For us it's not a pivot, it's just an ongoing evolution of the platform."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [01:15] Stephen Besarha (joking about AI's reach): "AI comes for us all."
• [03:56] Ben Gagnon, on the company name: "You know, bits are not specific to bitcoin. Right. It's bits. AI uses bits."
• [06:24] Stephen Besarha: "Imagine a lot better for your blood pressure."
  [06:27] Ben Gagnon: "Certainly doesn't hurt."
• [09:18] Stephen Besarha: "All right, so don't call it a pivot, call it a diversifying."
• [09:47] Darren Woods, on tech optimism: "If I were looking for optimism, the dot com bubble might be the last place I'd look."

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------| | 00:14 | Hosts introduce the bitcoin mining mystery | | 02:40 | Interview with Ben Gagnon of Bitfarms | | 03:38 | Bitfarms' shift away from bitcoin discussed | | 04:31 | Importance of energy assets explained | | 05:06 | Climate and energy supply concerns | | 05:52 | Volatility of bitcoin mining | | 07:38 | Interview with Kent Draper of Iron | | 08:51 | Draper on future-proofing by flexibility | | 09:22 | "Not a pivot, an evolution" |

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Takeaways

• Major bitcoin mining companies are rapidly exiting crypto in favor of AI data center operations due to better margins, steadier growth, and the immense demand for AI computing.
• The real strategic asset is energy—companies securing long-term energy supplies can flexibly serve whichever compute-intensive business is most profitable.
• Environmental and grid stress from these shifts is a growing, unsolved problem.
• While some leaders remain philosophically committed to bitcoin, pragmatic business decisions are steering companies elsewhere.
• Others, like Iron, are hedging bets, waiting to see what future high-energy, high-compute use cases might arise.

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Episode Tone:
Conversational, lightly humorous, and insightful, with a focus on making complex business shifts accessible to a general audience.

Transcript

[NPR Announcer]

Npr.

[Darren Woods]

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darren Woods.

[Stephen Besarha]

And I'm Stephen Besarha. There's a big shift happening right now in the world of bitcoin. And no, we are not talking about how much the price has plummeted in recent months. We're talking about a deeper shift, one happening underground that gets to the core of how the cryptocurrency works. We're going into the bitcoin mines.

[Darren Woods]

The thing about bitcoin is that it does not have one group in charge of making new coins like the US treasury for the dollar. Instead, the so called bitcoin miners solve complex math problems on computers. And if they're successful, a bitcoin is born.

[Stephen Besarha]

It used to be that pretty much anyone could do this in their bedroom even, but you need pretty powerful computers and a lot of energy. So today it's mostly done by companies with big data centers.

[NPR Announcer]

Big.

[Darren Woods]

But recently those companies are shifting away from bitcoin mining to a new technology. Yes, it is the great disruptor of the entire economy and it's shaking up bitcoin too. They're switching to AI.

[Stephen Besarha]

AI comes for us all.

[Darren Woods]

So on today's show, why these companies are putting down their virtual pickaxes and becoming landlords in the world of AI.

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[Stephen Besarha]

Bitcoin mining companies we're talking about is called Bit Farms and the CEO is Ben Gagnon.

[Ben Gagnon]

We had four co founders, two of them from Argentina who were actually mining bitcoin and ether in a small Argentinian hotel.

[Stephen Besarha]

I feel like the stereotypical image of people have Bitcoin mining for so long was, like, in a hotel room with a bunch of servers all, like, duct taped together. That's how you all actually started.

[Ben Gagnon]

I think it started in a basement, but, yeah, it was. It was in a hotel for sure.

[Darren Woods]

Bitfarm has since moved up from a basement to big data centers. The company has a dozen of them in North America.

[Stephen Besarha]

And bitfarms is far from the only company that's grown since those underground days. Different estimates put the market size for crypto crypto mining last year at around one and a half to over $2 billion.

[Darren Woods]

But that market size could end up shrinking. Companies like Iron Riot, Terra Wolf, and Cypher Mining have all recently announced moves away from mining to running data centers for AI.

[Stephen Besarha]

What is the future of bitcoin mining at bitfarm?

[Ben Gagnon]

Well, we're actually scaling back the bitcoin mining business quite aggressively. We've sold off a number of sites. Likely, over the next year or two, the bitcoin mining business is going to completely wind up.

[Stephen Besarha]

I mean, the name is bitfarms. What is bitfarms without the bitcoin?

[Ben Gagnon]

Well, you know, bits are not specific to bitcoin. Right. It's bits. AI uses bits.

[Darren Woods]

Okay, good comeback. And, you know, bits are actually a pretty useful way of thinking about this. Some bits can, at the end of the day, hold an electric charge, and that is the fuel needed for bitcoin miners to get ahead. That's especially true in the AI race as well.

[Stephen Besarha]

Yeah. And what's important to know, though, is that bitcoin miners, they don't actually make energy. Instead, they have agreements with power companies to buy power, something Ben says can take a long time to negotiate.

[Ben Gagnon]

The energy is the asset. The energy is where all the value is. And the bitcoin miners were just how we use the energy and monetize the energy. But it was the energy which was the core value.

[Stephen Besarha]

So what I'm hearing is don't call us a bitcoin mining company. Don't call us an AI company. Call us an energy company.

[Ben Gagnon]

Yeah. Call us an energy and infrastructure company. What we solve is the bottleneck on energy. Right. And getting access to energy takes years in the United States. And so having that access to energy means that you can start moving a lot faster with greater certainty.

[Darren Woods]

Now, we should mention that both bitcoin and AI use massive amounts of energy. That's driving up electricity prices across the country and often dumping greenhouse gases. And we know that is not good for the climate.

[Stephen Besarha]

Yeah. Power companies are also looking to generate more electricity to meet all this demand, but for now, there's a limited supply.

[Darren Woods]

So if you're a company with access to this energy and you had to pick to use it for bitcoin or AI, it's not hard to pick AI. I mean, it is the hot tech that is driving the stock market right now. It's how Nvidia became a $5 trillion company.

[Stephen Besarha]

Yeah. Bitcoin mining, on the other hand, requires riding the bitcoin price roller coaster up and down. Do that for years and it can go from thrilling to exhausting.

[Ben Gagnon]

Bitcoin mining is so volatile that it's really hard to forecast how you want to grow the company over the next even two years. You're looking at a 12 month or less time frame and something could happen tomorrow, which means that your plans don't make sense anymore.

[Darren Woods]

So you can stay on the roller.

[Ben Gagnon]

Coaster or you can move over to a business that is, you know, not volatile. Not volatile and is predictable, has higher revenues, higher margins, higher cash flows.

[Stephen Besarha]

Imagine a lot better for your blood pressure.

[Ben Gagnon]

Certainly doesn't hurt.

[Darren Woods]

Good for his blood pressure, maybe. But all of this AI bubble talk we've been hearing lately is raising the blood pressure of lots of investors.

[Stephen Besarha]

Now, Ben is not too worried about a bubble. And interestingly, even with this switch, he is still a believer in bitcoin.

[Darren Woods]

He's the optimist.

[Ben Gagnon]

We're all bitcoiners here at this company. We are all joined a bitcoin company. We all believe in bitcoin. We all own bitcoin. So that's not a decision that anyone made lightly.

[Stephen Besarha]

Talking to Ben as the bitcoin believer and not Ben as the bit farm CEO or I guess both. What does it mean to you to be a bitcoin believer and be like, well, we're pivoting away from it.

[Ben Gagnon]

You know, I don't know if there's a conflict there. Right. Like, you can believe in bitcoin and it can also not be the right thing for you or the company to do with, you know, your assets and your strategy. Doesn't mean I'm selling my bitcoin. Doesn't mean I no longer believe in bitcoin, but it just means that there's a better opportunity for the. For the company itself.

[Darren Woods]

Not all the miners are packing up their virtual pickaxes. And ironically, one company keeping it going isn't even one of those bitcoin believers.

[Kent Draper]

Bitcoin mining for us today is extremely cash flow.

[Darren Woods]

Generative Aussies know a lot about mining.

[Stephen Besarha]

Yeah. And that Aussie is Kent Draper. He's the chief commercial officer at Iron, which is another company that mines bitcoin.

[Kent Draper]

Even with the recent falls in the bitcoin price, still generating large amounts of cash for us.

[Darren Woods]

Now, Iron was not actually formed to mine bitcoin. Instead, the company was created seven years ago, essentially as a beta.

[Stephen Besarha]

Yeah, the bet was that in this rapidly growing tech world, there was going to be a need for advanced data centers. So Aaron built those centers and then put them to use on whatever computing task would make the most money.

[Kent Draper]

And historically, that was bitcoin mining.

[Darren Woods]

Only recently has that shifted over to AI. And Kent is confident that next year AI will be iron's main moneymaker.

[Stephen Besarha]

But he's also not committing all his eggs to the AI basket. Bitcoin mining is one revenue stream and AI is now a second third, based on how you break up the business.

[Darren Woods]

And as new technologies continue to emerge, Kent's sticking with that bet that there will be more uses for big computers and lots of energy that we can't even dream of today.

[Kent Draper]

If you rewind, even five years ago, I mean, AI as it is today was a twinkle in the eye of a bunch of R and D people. So if you fast forward 10 years from now, who knows what the use cases could be? But we feel as if we're sitting in a great spot where we have access to this amazing data center platform as well as renewable energy at large scale.

[Stephen Besarha]

All right, so don't call it a pivot, call it a diversifying.

[Kent Draper]

Yeah, I mean, we consistently tell people, for us it's not a pivot, it's just an ongoing evolution of the platform. So that's certainly how we like to think of it.

[Stephen Besarha]

So, Darian, this is a lot of AI future tech optimism. I mean, Ben Gagnon even dismissed AI bubble concerns by saying there was a dot com bubble in the 90s and yet we still have a massive web based economy today.

[Darren Woods]

Yeah, if I were looking for optimism, the dot com bubble might be the last place I'd look. Tomorrow we'll have a conversation about what a similar crash could mean now. And it's not pretty.

[Stephen Besarha]

This episode is produced by Cooper Katzman Kim and engineered by Debbie Daughtry. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Co Cannon is our editor. The indicator is a production of npr.

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