Hosting contracts reprice sharply as AI data centres compete for the same power

Bitcoin miners renewing hosting agreements this year are facing sharply higher prices per kilowatt as artificial-intelligence data-centre developers bid for the same interconnection capacity.

The competition is uneven. AI operators can support far higher revenue per megawatt than block production at current hashprice, which allows them to outbid miners for sites with existing grid connections and to accept longer contract terms.

Several listed miners have responded by converting part of their footprint, retrofitting halls for high-density liquid-cooled racks, or selling shell sites and pre-approved interconnection queue positions outright.

Retrofitting is not straightforward. Mining halls are built for cheap air movement and tolerate downtime; AI tenants require redundancy, tighter thermal control and service commitments that mining sites were never designed to meet.

The miners least exposed are those that own generation or hold long-dated power purchase agreements signed before the repricing, an advantage that fades as those contracts approach renewal.

For the network, the effect is a slower rate of new capacity additions and a hashrate growth curve that has flattened relative to the equipment shipment forecasts published last year.