Bitcoin Mining’s Dark Future: Why Only a Handful of Survivors Will Power the Next Bull Market

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 I strongly recommend reading this article all the way to the end; your money is precious, and knowledge is what protects it.

  1. Bitcoin mining is being squeezed from every angle: record hashrate, rising electricity prices, tougher regulations and repeated halvings have turned it into a knife’s-edge business.

  2. I personally think the future of most mining companies is structurally dark, but the network still needs miners, so a very small club of ultra-efficient, energy-rich operators and AI-oriented data-center players will dominate.

  3. For investors, the game is no longer “buy any miner as a leveraged BTC play,” but “either hold Bitcoin itself, or be extremely selective and focus on miners that own cheap power and are evolving into AI/HPC infrastructure businesses.”

Personal note: If you invest some of the amount in High Risk High Return assets, mining companies could be one of the options.

BTC MINING

1. The 2025 paradox: strong network, fragile miners

On-chain, Bitcoin has never been stronger. The network’s hashrate is sitting near all-time highs, block after block is secured by enormous amounts of computing power, and the protocol itself is functioning exactly as designed. From a pure security perspective, Bitcoin is over-collateralized with hash.

But beneath that surface, miners are being crushed. After the 2024 halving, the block reward dropped from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Daily new supply fell sharply, just as more and more ASICs came online. At the same time, only a small fraction of the total BTC supply remains to be mined; the “fresh” coins miners receive every day are a tiny portion of total circulation.

The result is a brutal squeeze:

  • Revenue per unit of hashrate (hashprice) has fallen to historically low levels.

  • Electricity costs have risen or stayed sticky in many regions.

  • Difficulty keeps ratcheting higher as industrial-scale players add capacity.


The paradox is simple:

  • Bitcoin the network is thriving.

  • Bitcoin miners as a group are fighting for survival.

2. Structural headwinds: power, regulation, competition

Power: fighting AI data centers for the same megawatt

Bitcoin mining has always been an energy business first and a “crypto” business second. In 2025 that reality is more obvious than ever. Miners are competing directly with AI data centers and cloud providers for the same grid capacity.

Wherever power is cheap and relatively stable, you’ll find two types of customers knocking on the door:

  • AI / high-performance computing (HPC) operators

  • Bitcoin miners

AI has a big advantage: huge, long-term contracts and deep pockets. If both sides are bidding for the same megawatt, the miner almost always loses unless they either own the generation asset or have a genuinely special deal. That is why the industry is increasingly obsessed with securing sub-$0.03/kWh power and long-duration contracts. Anything above that puts you at real risk when difficulty climbs or price corrects.

Regulation: bans, punitive tariffs, and policy whiplash

Mining has also become a regulatory test case. Some countries actively court miners, offering tax breaks and long-term power deals to attract data-center investment. Others use mining as a punching bag:

  • Floating special “crypto mining tariffs”

  • Capping or banning new mining facilities

  • Shutting down operations in the name of ESG or grid stability

We’ve already seen entire regions go from mining hotspots to “no-go zones” within a year. That kind of policy whiplash destroys capex-heavy businesses. Even well-funded players have been forced to scale back or relocate when local politics turned against them.

Competition: record hashrate, collapsing margins

Despite all this, competition refuses to die. Publicly listed miners keep energizing new sites, private firms quietly add capacity, and hashrate grinds upward.

For a small or mid-tier miner, that means:

  • Your share of the total hashrate keeps shrinking unless you expand aggressively.

  • Expansion requires more capex, more debt, or more equity dilution.

  • Every new machine you and your competitors plug in pushes difficulty higher and squeezes everyone’s margins.

The few lucky stories of hobbyists hitting a block with tiny machines make headlines precisely because they are lottery-level events. For almost everyone else, “just plug in a few rigs at home” is not a business model — it’s an expensive raffle ticket.

3. The 2028 halving: why mid-tier miners are in real danger

The next halving, expected around 2028, will again cut the block subsidy in half: from 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC per block.

If we assume:

  • Electricity prices do not suddenly collapse,

  • Hashrate continues to trend higher over time,

  • Transaction fees remain volatile and cyclical,

then the basic picture is clear:

  • The revenue per terahash shrinks again overnight.

  • Only miners with very cheap power and modern hardware can survive comfortably.

  • Mid-tier miners with average electricity costs and heavy debt loads are in the kill zone.

Historically, every halving has done two things at once:

  1. Long-term, it has helped drive massive BTC bull markets.

  2. Short- to medium-term, it has wiped out inefficient miners and redistributed hashrate to the survivors.

The 2028 cycle will likely be no exception, but this time many of the “inefficient” players are not amateurs; they are publicly traded industrial operators with big fleets, big debt and big promises to shareholders. Those are exactly the businesses that can implode when the math stops working.

4. What the future miner really looks like

When you strip away all the noise, the miners with a realistic chance of long-term survival share a few traits.

1) Energy owners, not just energy customers
Survivors either:

  • Own the power source (hydro, stranded gas, renewables, small-scale generation), or

  • Lock in ultra-cheap, long-duration power purchase agreements.

If you are buying electricity at normal industrial rates and competing with AI for grid capacity, you are permanently on the back foot.

2) Data-center mindset: Bitcoin + AI/HPC
The pure “we only mine Bitcoin” model is fading. The modern miner increasingly looks like a data-center operator that uses its power and racks flexibly:

  • Switching between Bitcoin mining and AI/HPC workloads,

  • Leasing GPU or CPU compute,

  • Offering colocation and hosting services.

This gives them optionality: they can chase whichever workload delivers the best return on power at any given time.

3) Clean balance sheets and patient capital
Hashprice can stay depressed longer than many boards can stay patient. Miners with heavy debt, expensive equipment financing or constant equity issuance are essentially leveraged bets on “number go up soon.”

The survivors will be those who can:

  • Endure 12–24 months of bad conditions,

  • Avoid constant dilution,

  • Keep investing in next-generation hardware when weaker players are forced to liquidate.

4) Friendly jurisdictions
Mining is a long-duration infrastructure play. That only works in countries and regions that actually want the industry, or at least tolerate it in a stable way. Where policy is hostile or unpredictable, capex eventually flees.

5. Representative mining companies: different faces of the same game

This is not a recommendation to buy anything, but these names help illustrate how mining strategies are evolving.

Marathon Digital (MARA)
One of the biggest publicly traded miners by hashrate and a major corporate holder of BTC. The business model is straightforward: very large-scale self-mining plus a sizable Bitcoin treasury.

  • Strength: high leverage to Bitcoin price moves; when BTC rips higher, MARA can move violently to the upside.

  • Weakness: relatively pure exposure to mining economics; less diversification into AI/HPC than some peers.

Riot Platforms (RIOT)
A large U.S. miner with strong presence in Texas. Riot is known for aggressively using power contracts and demand-response programs, sometimes earning substantial credits by curtailing power usage during peak demand.

  • Strength: sophisticated power-market strategy in a key mining region.

  • Weakness: exposed to U.S. regulatory risk and to competition from AI data centers within the same grid.

CleanSpark (CLSK)
A hybrid model combining Bitcoin mining with AI and high-performance data centers. CleanSpark has secured significant contracted power capacity and openly positions itself as a “Bitcoin + AI infrastructure” company.

  • Strength: flexible revenue mix; can arbitrage between mining and selling compute.

  • Weakness: still carries the cyclicality of mining alongside the capex demands of data centers.

Core Scientific (CORZ and related)
A large operator that went through bankruptcy, restructured, and re-emerged. Today it operates substantial data-center capacity, hosts third-party clients, and still mines Bitcoin on its own account.

  • Strength: scale, existing infrastructure, and a clear role as a landlord for compute.

  • Weakness: a complex history and sensitivity to both AI and BTC cycles at once.

Bitdeer (BTDR)
A vertically integrated player combining self-mining, hosting, proprietary ASIC design, and emerging AI cloud services. It is one of the clearest examples of a miner deliberately evolving into a broader compute company.

  • Strength: multiple revenue streams (hardware, mining, AI cloud, hosting).

  • Weakness: execution risk across several complex businesses at the same time.

HIVE Digital (HIVE)
Positions itself as a sustainable data-center company with both BTC mining and growing HPC workloads. HIVE is another example of the “Bitcoin + high-performance computing” hybrid future.

  • Strength: branding around green infrastructure and HPC.

  • Weakness: still relatively small compared to mega-scale miners and hyperscalers.

These companies show the spectrum: from pure miners with big treasuries to data-center operators who happen to mine BTC when the numbers line up.

6. Scenarios for mining stocks vs Bitcoin itself

From an investor’s perspective, I see three broad scenarios.

Bull case

  • Bitcoin enters a new multi-year bull market.

  • Hashrate growth slows as weaker miners capitulate.

  • AI/HPC demand remains strong, allowing hybrid miners to fully monetize their power.

  • A handful of miners deliver explosive returns, temporarily outperforming BTC itself.

Base case (my default view)

  • Bitcoin trends higher over the long run but remains violently cyclical.

  • Electricity costs stay elevated; AI keeps bidding for power.

  • Several mid-tier miners merge, pivot fully into data centers, or disappear.

  • A few carefully chosen miners outperform, but many others underperform BTC or go to zero.

Bear case

  • Bitcoin’s price stagnates or weakens while hashrate stays high.

  • Power prices rise and key jurisdictions tighten rules.

  • Mining equities go through a multi-year bleed similar to past commodity producer busts, with a small number of survivors bought out by bigger AI or data-center players.

In all three scenarios, one thing is constant: Bitcoin itself is structurally safer than any single miner. The protocol does not default, does not issue new shares, and does not depend on any one company’s balance sheet. It simply keeps paying whoever shows up with hash.

7. What this means for individual investors

If you are an individual investor thinking about mining, here’s how I would summarize it.

  1. Home mining is usually a bad trade. Once you factor in hardware cost, electricity, noise, heat, and difficulty, the risk-adjusted return is usually worse than simply buying BTC. For most people, it is a hobby or ideological project, not an efficient investment.

  2. If you’re bullish on Bitcoin but doubt mining economics, just buy BTC. That’s the cleanest expression of your thesis without operational risk.

  3. If you still want miner exposure, be ruthless and keep it small.

    • Focus on companies with real power advantages and long-term contracts.

    • Favor miners that are evolving into AI/HPC or broader data-center businesses.

    • Avoid names that survive only by constant dilution or expensive debt.

  4. Treat mining stocks as speculative satellites, not your core. In my view, mining equities should sit at the edges of a portfolio built around more robust assets, not at the center.

Your initial intuition is exactly on point: the future of most mining companies is dark, but someone still has to keep the network running. That “someone” will be a small group of capital-rich, energy-rich operators who either mine Bitcoin, sell AI compute, or both — and who understand they are in the power business first and the Bitcoin business second.

This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice; any decisions you make with your money are entirely your own responsibility.

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