As the world of cryptocurrency continues to evolve, Bitcoin mining remains a cornerstone of the digital economy. However, a significant shift is underway as Artificial Intelligence (AI) begins to permeate our lives, raising an intriguing question: is AI taking over Bitcoin mining?
The Bitcoin miner Core Scientific Inc. is transforming a portion of its infrastructure to support artificial intelligence firms’ high-performance processing needs. The Austin, Texas-based business converted a 16 megawatt data centre and intends to convert more in the future for AI firm CoreWeave Inc. The decision was made in the midst of declining Bitcoin mining profits and rising demand for data centres to house GPUs for artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
Since late April, a blockchain code modification has resulted in a 50% reduction in the primary revenue for Bitcoin miners. These modifications, known as the halving, lower the amount of Bitcoin awarded to miners who verify transaction data on the network by 50% every four years in order to preserve the 21 million token maximum and prevent inflation of the virtual currency. Based on the price of the original cryptocurrency at the time, miners lost an estimated $10 billion (R185.57 billion) in annual earnings as a result of last month’s halving, the fourth since 2012. Daily Bitcoin output was reduced from 900 to 450.
To increase income and capitalise on the AI boom, some large-scale miners—like Core Scientific—are converting some of their assets to offer data centre services to AI firms that also depend on energy-intensive equipment. During Wednesday’s results call, Adam Sullivan, the CEO of Core Scientific, stated, “We expect to build out this part of our business further over the course of the year. We are in regular discussion with our customer in this space.”
“We aim to become a market leader and provide the digital infrastructure for high-performance computing.” It will probably take three to four years to fully convert 500 megawatts of Bitcoin mining infrastructure to host high-performance computing, and the company hopes to start making money as it adds new customers, according to Sullivan.
The company reported first-quarter revenue of $179.3 million (R3.33 billion), up $58.6 million from the same period the previous year. More processing power produced by its facilities and the increase in Bitcoin prices earlier this year were the main causes of that.
