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Bitcoin miners face a new rival for cheap power as Anthropic signs multi-gigawatt compute deal

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A gigawatt of mining capacity earns revenue that swings with bitcoin's price and network difficulty. The same gigawatt rented to an AI company earns contracted, predictable cash flows. At $69,000 bitcoin with difficulty at all-time highs and energy costs rising alongside every other industrial consumer competing for grid capacity, the AI rental often pays better. (CoinDesk)

Anthropic has announced a partnership with Google and Broadcom for “multiple gigawatts” of next-generation TPU compute capacity expected to come online starting in 2027, a commitment the company called its most significant to date as revenue growth accelerated to a $30 billion annual run rate from $9 billion at the end of 2025.

The scale of AI compute demand is now competing directly with bitcoin mining for the same scarce resources — grid connections, land permits, cooling infrastructure, and cheap electricity.

A Cambridge tracker estimates bitcoin mining draws roughly 13 to 25 gigawatts of continuous power globally depending on hardware efficiency assumptions.

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Anthropic securing multiple gigawatts from a single deal, on top of existing capacity across AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and Nvidia GPUs, shows just how quickly AI is becoming a peer-level competitor for the same energy infrastructure that miners depend on.

And Anthropic is one company. OpenAI, which raised $122 billion last week and described compute as a “strategic moat,” is building across an even wider infrastructure portfolio spanning five cloud providers and four chip platforms.

The aggregate AI compute buildout now represents one of the largest sources of new electricity demand in the United States, arriving at the same moment bitcoin miners are deciding whether to mine bitcoin or rent their infrastructure to AI companies.

A gigawatt of mining capacity earns revenue that swings with bitcoin's price and network difficulty. The same gigawatt rented to an AI company earns contracted, predictable cash flows. At $69,000 bitcoin with difficulty at all-time highs and energy costs rising alongside every other industrial consumer competing for grid capacity, the AI rental often pays better. (CoinDesk)

That decision is increasingly going one direction. Core Scientific converted a significant portion of its mining capacity to AI hosting through a deal with CoreWeave. Iris Energy and Hut 8 have expanded their AI and high-performance computing revenue. Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings, and Genius Group disclosed selling more than 19,000 BTC from their treasuries last week, a sign that mining economics alone are not sustaining operations at current prices and difficulty levels.

A bitcoin miner running a gigawatt of capacity earns revenue that fluctuates with bitcoin’s price and network difficulty. The same gigawatt rented to an AI company earns a contracted rate with predictable cash flows.

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At $69,000 bitcoin with difficulty at all-time highs and energy costs rising alongside every other industrial consumer competing for the same grid capacity, the AI rental often pays better.

The revenue numbers behind the expansion tell their own story. Anthropic said the number of business customers spending more than $1 million annually on Claude has doubled from 500 to over 1,000 in less than two months.

None of this means bitcoin mining is dying, however. The network’s hashrate continues to hit record levels above 1 zetahash per second.

But the miners who survive the current cycle may look less like energy companies that produce bitcoin and more like infrastructure companies that happen to mine bitcoin on the side while renting their real asset, cheap power at scale, to an AI industry that cannot build data centers fast enough.

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Crypto World

Bitcoin up, software stocks down since the war began

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Bitcoin up, software stocks down since the war began

Since the outbreak of the war with Iran on Feb. 28, bitcoin has started to diverge from software equities, with the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV), serving as a useful proxy for the sector.

Bitcoin has been one of the strongest-performing assets during this period, rising more than 5% and trading back above $69,000, including a gain of more than 0.5% over the past 24 hours.

IGV, in contrast, has fallen more than 2% since the conflict began. That gap suggests investors are starting to treat bitcoin and software stocks differently, at least in the near term.

Until recently, the two had moved closely together. Over the past three months, bitcoin fell 26% and the ETF lost 23%. Year to date, both are lower by about 21%. Over five years, bitcoin has gained 18% compared with 10% for IGV. In other words, both have moved in the same direction, but the cryptocurrency has done so with much greater volatility.

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That is also clear in their declines. Bitcoin had fallen roughly 50% from its October all-time high, while IGV, which peaked slightly earlier, fell about 35% from its own top.

The correlation data tells the same story. From early February, bitcoin and IGV were almost perfectly correlated, close to 1.0, meaning they were moving nearly in lockstep. After the war began, that relationship broke down sharply, with the correlation dropping to 0.13, a level that signals near decoupling, before rebounding to around 0.7. The figure can range between -1.0 and +1.0, with 0 indicating no correlation at all.

Why have software stocks been hit harder?

IGV is heavily weighted toward large software and services companies such as Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL) and Salesforce (CRM). Investors are increasingly worried that artificial intelligence will compress margins and valuation multiples across software, especially in Software as a Service (SaaS), as competition rises and barriers to entry fall. Bitcoin, meanwhile, is trading more like a macro asset, benefiting from geopolitical uncertainty.

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Bitcoin Trader Eyes Bear Market Bottom as Stochastic RSI Mimics 2023

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Bitcoin Trader Eyes Bear Market Bottom as Stochastic RSI Mimics 2023

Bitcoin (BTC) is copying the end of its 2022 bear market “nearly perfectly,” according to a new BTC price analysis.

Key points:

  • Bitcoin stochastic RSI values are “nearly perfectly” repeating the end of its last bear market, new analysis claims.

  • Both recent local bottoms and the current rebound echo conditions from three years ago.

  • Standard RSI is already on the radar for a potential BTC price bottom signal.

Bitcoin stochastic RSI echoes 2023 rebound

In an X post on Monday, crypto trader Quantum Ascend revealed copycat moves playing out on Bitcoin’s stochastic relative strength index (RSI) indicator.

Stochastic RSI, also known as “stoch RSI,” is a derivative of traditional RSI — a classic leading indicator that helps traders identify overbought and oversold conditions, as well as BTC price trend changes.

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Like its standard counterpart, stoch RSI flashes “oversold” price signals when it drops below 30/100 on its scale, with “overbought” entering when its value is above 70/100.

Stoch RSI moves between those two zones much more quickly, but Quantum Ascend sees a key long-term bull signal now locking in.

“RSI at the EXACT SAME point on the Daily as it was in 2022,” he told X followers.

BTC price and stochastic RSI comparison. Source: Quantum Ascend/X

An accompanying comparative chart shows stoch RSI making a double bottom along with price before both surged higher in early 2023. At the time, BTC/USD had recently set a multiyear low of $15,600 — a level that ended up forming the bear-market bottom.

Now, Quantum Ascend says, the repeat performance is “playing out nearly perfectly.”

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“Breaking above the EXACT SAME level (blue line). At the EXACT SAME time,” he added.

The chart reveals that stoch RSI is now attempting to clear its 50/100 midpoint after two local lows in late January and late March, respectively.

BTC price counts down to bear flag decision

RSI signals have already been firing in 2026 despite lackluster BTC price strength.

Related: First real bull signal since 2025? Five things to know in Bitcoin this week

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As Cointelegraph reported, eyes are on weekly standard RSI to print a bullish divergence with price, again mimicking early 2023.

At the time, weekly RSI set its lowest level on record — one so far not matched in 2026, per data from TradingView.

BTC/USD one-week chart with RSI data. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin still faces bearish hurdles to recovery, with traders concerned about a bear-flag breakdown repeating on the daily chart.

“In few days we will understand if the pattern is repeating or not,” analyst Aksel Kibar wrote on X over the weekend.

BTC/USD one-day chart. Source: Aksel Kibar/X