Block reward miners appear increasingly unconvinced that the BTC they produce will rise in value over time, putting additional downward pressure on the token’s fiat price.
Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) released its FY25 earnings report on Monday, showing record revenue of $647.7 million, up 72% from 2024. Mining revenue soared nearly 80% to $576.3 million thanks to Riot’s growing hash rate and BTC’s price surge through most of last year. Engineering revenue rose 68% to $64.7 million.
Despite these rosy sums, Riot booked a net loss of $663.2 million, a whiplash-worthy turnaround from the $110 million profit Riot reported in 2024. The loss came courtesy of significant increases in mining costs, depreciation of Riot’s ASIC mining rigs, nearly $126 million in stock-based compensation expenses, and a $158.1 million loss from Riot’s unwinding of its ties to fellow miner Rhodium Enterprises, which filed for bankruptcy protection in August 2024.
Another contributor to 2025’s losses was the decline in the value of the BTC Riot held on its balance sheet at the end of 2025. While BTC soared over the first nine months of the year, it tanked in the final quarter and has continued its downward trajectory over the first two months of 2026.
Riot sold 1,800 BTC in December, a significant uptick from its previous monthly sales, and sold another 1,080 in January. The proceeds from that latter sale were used to acquire land in Texas to host a new AI/high-performance computing (HPC) data center, with Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) as the new site’s first client.
Asked on the earnings call how future sales of some or all of Riot’s remaining 18,005 BTC would factor into capex funding going forward, CFO Jason Chung said the company’s “funding hierarchy … starts with the Bitcoin treasury. In addition to selling all of our ongoing Bitcoin monthly production, we have and will continue to sell Bitcoin directly from our balance sheet in order to fund our operational needs and grow CapEx.”
While mining accounted for 89% of Riot’s 2025 revenue, the above question was the call’s only mining-related query. Instead, analysts were laser-focused on Riot’s AI/HPC plans.
Riot CEO Jason Les acknowledged the pivot upfront, saying the company “has evolved from a Bitcoin mining company with data center potential into a proven data center developer with a track record of rapid execution.”
Les added that while the bulk of Riot’s power capacity “is currently monetized through Bitcoin mining … going forward, we will continue to convert power capacity and pursue data center leases that maximize value for our shareholders.” Les said the company’s AMD lease “generates 2.5x more gross profit per megawatt than Bitcoin mining. This economic framework will guide our capital allocation decisions going forward.”
While Riot’s share price initially jumped on Monday’s report, it has since surrendered all those gains and then some, closing Tuesday down 7% to $15.29. The decline mirrored BTC surrendering much of its own gains from Monday’s minor surge to nearly $70,000. In other words, as BTC goes, so does Riot. At least, until its revenue share aligns with its AI/HPC ambitions.
In other Riot news, the company announced a $20 million settlement with SBI Crypto over a breach of contract claim the latter brought against Riot in 2023. The claim stemmed from the termination of a mining hosting contract SBI had with Riot’s Whinstone facility after Riot acquired the Rockdale, Texas, site in 2021. SBI had sought up to $350 million in damages, so chalk this up as a Riot win.
Core Scientific says everything (named BTC) must go
Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) began its AI pivot not long after it clawed its way back from filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection three years ago. But mining revenue still accounted for the bulk of its Q425 results, although mining’s share is decreasing almost as fast as Core’s BTC treasury.
Core reported revenue of $79.8 million in Q4, down from nearly $95 million in the final three months of 2024. Self-mining revenue accounted for $42.2 million, down from nearly $80 million in Q424, while hosted mining revenue slipped by just $200,000 to $6.3 million. Meanwhile, ‘colocation’ revenue, aka AI/HPC hosting, jumped to $31.3 million from just $8.5 million in the prior year period.
Core reported a Q4 profit of $216 million, compared to a $291 million loss in Q424. However, the profit figure was boosted by a $330.3 million non-cash fair-value gain on the company’s debt obligations, as its stock price cratered during Q4.
Core’s BTC treasury currently stands at 613 tokens after the company began ditching these hot potatoes to fund its AI/HPC buildout. This included January’s sale of over 1,900 tokens for $175 million, well below what those tokens would have been worth had they been sold a few months earlier.
On Core’s analyst call, CFO Jim Nygaard described January’s sale as ‘opportunistic’ because the sale was conducted before BTC’s price fell even further. Nygaard said Core expects to “remain opportunistic going forward” in terms of reducing the company’s remaining BTC stack.
A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 10-K filing accompanying Core’s results said “we currently expect to monetize substantially all of our bitcoin holdings, subject to market conditions, to enhance liquidity and fund our planned capital expenditures and other cash requirements.” Core “expects the majority of these sales would occur” in the current quarter.
Nygaard told analysts that mining “continued to support the funding of the company as we progressed through the transition” from miner to data center operator in Q4. Nygaard said Core would continue mining “to cover contractual power costs” but would do so at minimum power draw requirements.
The presentation accompanying Core’s results doesn’t mention BTC once. Only one analyst asked about mining on the earnings call, a question to CEO Adam Sullivan regarding the sector’s outlook in 2026.
Sullivan said it was “interesting” to see hash price “go to levels that have never been seen before. Dipping below $0.03 [per terahash] was definitely something that I think folks thought might happen probably in 2027 or 2028, given where machine efficiency is today. For us, that business is still essentially in runoff today.”
Sullivan added that Core is “trying to manage our machine fleet based on what our minimum power draw requirements are across a number of different sites.” This week will see Core deploy new mining rigs made by Jack Dorsey’s Block (NASDAQ: SQ), which Sullivan claims will “help us maintain productivity across our mining portfolio and really help us hit … those minimum power draw requirements profitably.”
Sullivan said he expects “every megawatt in our portfolio to be dedicated to [AI/HPC] within the next three years.” That will be shortly after the next BTC ‘halving’ event, which will reduce the network subsidy to just 1.5625 tokens per block, which will in turn reduce the number of entities willing to keep playing this losing game.
Core shares closed Tuesday down 7.2% to $15.30 but remain up 5% since the year began.
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MARA denies it’s dumping all its BTC
The miner with the largest BTC treasury is MARA (NASDAQ: MARA), which currently holds 53,822 tokens, many of them acquired at a much higher price than they’re currently worth. MARA said this week that it purchased 4,267 BTC last year at an average price of over $111,000 apiece. That’s ~$43,000 above BTC’s current price, putting 2025’s acquired tokens ~$185 million in the red.
The price plunge that began last October accounted for $1 billion worth of the $1.7 billion net loss MARA reported in its Q4 results last week. MARA said its total treasury was worth $4.7 billion as of December 31, 2025, based on BTC’s spot price of $87,498 at the time. As of mid-Tuesday, that stack is worth $3.66 billion.
MARA’s own AI/HPC pivot saw it strike a joint venture deal with Starwood Digital Ventures last week, which will see many of MARA’s mining sites converted into data centers. Last year, MARA began selling some of its BTC and using other tokens as collateral for loans to help fund its pivot. MARA is now suggesting it’s even more open to selling its digital gold bricks.
In its 10-K filing, MARA acknowledged that it “historically” held the BTC it mined “as a long-term investment.” Going forward, “in 2026, we expect to continue to monetize bitcoin opportunistically to enhance our financial flexibility, including to provide liquidity or to fund capital projects and other initiatives that we believe enhance long-term shareholder value, subject to market conditions and our capital allocation priorities.”
The filing also contained boilerplate language that MARA “may need to sell a portion or all of our bitcoin holdings to meet our obligations.” As this language circulated on ‘crypto twitter,’ MARA’s VP of investor relations, Robert Samuels, tweeted that the notion that MARA was looking to sell most or all of its BTC “is factually incorrect.” MARA’s official X account quickly retweeted Samuels, adding the phrase “fact check.”
Samuels said MARA “may buy or sell from time to time subject to market conditions and our capital allocation priorities. It does not mean we intend to liquidate the majority of our reserves. Allowing for sales for strategic purposes is entirely different from a policy of selling down a majority of our bitcoin treasury. Please do not conflate the two.”
MARA shares closed Tuesday at $8.66, down 8.4% on the day.
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ABTC expands mining fleet
Not everyone is fleeing mining in search of AI/HPC profits. On Tuesday, American Bitcoin Corp (ABTC) (NASDAQ: ABTC) announced it had acquired another 11,298 ASIC rigs, bringing its total rig count to 89,242 (58,999 of which are operational). The new rigs will be installed later this month at ABTC’s Drumheller, Alberta site and will push ABTC’s overall hashrate to 28.1 EH/s (25.0 EH/s based on the operational rigs).
The source of these rigs went unspecified, but ABTC was formed last year as a majority-owned offshoot of miner Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT), which now focuses on AI/HPC. Before ABTC was formed, Hut 8 had a longstanding relationship with Bitmain, the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer. That relationship has served ABTC well in its ability to access Bitmain rigs on highly favorable terms.
ABTC’s co-founder/chief strategy officer is none other than Eric Trump, son of the U.S. president, which may well have aided ABTC’s negotiations with Bitmain. ABTC’s announcement quoted the younger Trump saying, “As Bitcoin matures, the priority is clear: grow American-owned, professionally operated hashrate. That’s how we protect the network, drive innovation, and lead the future of Bitcoin in America.”
ABTC’s ‘America first’ ethos couldn’t undo the unforgiving math of the company’s Q425 results, which showed a net loss of $59.5 million. ABTC is also a self-proclaimed ‘Bitcoin accumulator’ (a digital asset treasury by another name), holding 6,039 tokens. ABTC president Matt Prusak claimed “every decision we make is oriented around maximizing Bitcoin accumulation.”
Hut 8 currently holds 13,696 BTC in its treasury, a legacy of its pre-pivot years. The company announced a net loss of nearly $302 million in Q425, dragged down by a $402 million paper loss on the value of the double-edged sword known as BTC.
Tuesday marked six months since ABTC’s Nasdaq debut, and the shares closed at $1.03, up 1% on the day but down 87.2% since that September 3 debut. Hut 8 shares closed Tuesday down 9.7% to $47.60, although they’re up 3.6% so far this year.
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The pursuit of cheap energy
Miners may disagree on mining’s future prospects, but whether it’s BTC or AI/HPC, everyone agrees that access to cheap power is the only path to profits.
On February 20, MARA announced it had finalized its deal to acquire a 64% stake in Exaion, the data center offshoot of French utility Électricité de France (EDF). French law required that the deal, which was struck last August, must involve a French investor, a role being filled by NJJ Capital.
Under the terms of the deal, which still requires regulatory approval, EDF will remain an Exaion client and retain a minority stake in Exaion, while NJJ will get a 10% stake in MARA.
A different French utility, Engie, is considering using some of the juice from Assu Sol, its new solar plant in Brazil, to power a BTC mining operation. Brazil’s grid can’t absorb the full 895 MW that Assu produces, so Engie’s Brazilian country manager, Eduardo Sattamini, told reporters last month that the company was “looking at some possible offtakers” to improve Assu’s profitability.
However, Sattamini warned that any mining operation won’t be coming “next month. It will take a couple of years for us to implement.” Given that timeline puts Engie’s prospective mining op on the other side of the BTC network’s halving event, we recommend they skip the inevitable pivot and proceed directly to the AI/HPC data center business.
The Canadian province of Quebec is lousy with excess hydroelectric power, which years ago convinced a flood of mining operators to set up shop in La Belle Province. But Quebec’s patience with power-hungry miners eventually ran out, leading to a moratorium on new mining licenses and the occasional demand from local utility Hydro-Quebec to cut miners off from the grid, authorized or not.
Recently, Keel Infrastructure—the AI/HPC operator formerly known as miner Bitfarms (NASDAQ: BITF)—announced that it was converting its eight Quebec-based mining sites to data centers. The shift is timely, as Hydro-Quebec is looking to squeeze mining operators hard.
Hydro-Québec recently sought permission from the Régie de l’énergie (the Quebec Energy Board) to increase the rate imposed on new data centers that draw more than 5 MW of power per year to 13 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), roughly twice what data centers currently pay.
That’s harsh, but it’s better than what BTC miners face. Hydro-Quebec wants to charge miners 19.5 cents/kWh, in part due to the “limited economic benefits” of mining. Hydro-Quebec wants to implement both of these new rates in the second half of 2026.
Existing data centers would be offered a “five-year transitional tariff” to allow for “a gradual increase” to the new rate. The transitional tariff for mining operators will be imposed for over three years. (One gets the sense Hydro-Quebec really doesn’t like miners.)
In a February 19 release announcing the proposed rate hikes, Hydro-Quebec said AI/HPC data centers currently consume 200 MW, but this could reach “nearly 1,000 MW” by 2035. Mining operators consume 115 MW and “no growth in consumption” is expected.
The hikes aim to ensure that the AI/HPC and blockchain sectors “bear the costs associated with their high electricity demand while benefiting from a price comparable to those paid elsewhere in North America.”
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Watch: Gorilla Pool provides end to end solution for ASIC mining
Source: https://coingeek.com/are-block-reward-miners-selling-more-btc-than-theyre-mining/