Bitcoin miners are caught within the tightest squeeze of the community’s historical past, and a brand new Wintermute report argues that merely ready for the following bull run is not a technique.
As a substitute, the agency says miners should reinvent themselves as infrastructure and treasury managers in the event that they wish to make it to the following halving.
Wintermute analyst Jasper De Maere says the present mining cycle is structurally completely different from prior ones in 2018 and 2022. Bitcoin’s design cuts block rewards in half each 4 years, however this time the value has not doubled over the identical window, which suggests miner income is shrinking in actual phrases.
On a rolling 4‑12 months foundation, Bitcoin has solely returned about 1.15x on this epoch, far beneath the 10x–20x multiples seen in earlier cycles.
In previous cycles, large value positive aspects coated up loads of issues. Miners might depend on bull markets to bail out weak margins after every halving.
At this time, with establishments, ETFs, and company treasuries within the combine, Bitcoin trades extra like a mainstream macro asset, and people explosive 20x runs are much less doubtless.
For miners that constructed their enterprise on the idea of everlasting hypergrowth, Wintermute frames this as a regime change, not a foul quarter.
Margins are getting crushed
Beneath the hood, Bitcoin mining has a quite simple price construction: power and compute. That simplicity means there will not be some ways to guard earnings when income falls. Wintermute’s evaluation reveals gross margins on this epoch peaked round 30%, a stage that marked the underside throughout prior bear markets, not the highest.
Earlier epochs noticed lengthy stretches the place miners loved 70–80% margins; now, the “good occasions” look extra like prior stress factors.
Transaction charges will not be saving the day both. Price spikes tied to hype cycles and mempool congestion present up on charts, however they fade quick and infrequently contribute various p.c of whole miner income over time.
Wintermute notes that even while you embrace charges, the margin strains for every cycle barely transfer aside, particularly within the present epoch. In different phrases, the protocol’s constructed‑in “second income stream” will not be appearing as a dependable backstop.
The AI pivot is a chance for a couple of
One path out of the squeeze is getting loads of consideration: pivoting into excessive‑efficiency computing (HPC) and AI workloads. Large tech companies and AI startups are racing to lock in energy and knowledge heart capability, and they don’t wish to wait 5 to 10 years for brand spanking new grid connections and development.
Miners, who already management low cost energy and constructed‑out websites, are a pure shortcut.
Wintermute factors out that websites as soon as valued at roughly 1–7 {dollars} per watt as pure mining operations have modified fingers at near 18 {dollars} per watt after being repositioned for AI compute, helped by offers like HUT’s work with Google and Anthropic.
Public‑market traders have rewarded miners that announce credible AI plans with increased valuations and cheaper capital by way of fairness and convertible debt.
The catch is that not each miner has the situation high quality, steadiness sheet, or operational capability to show into an information‑heart enterprise.
Placing “idle” Bitcoin to work
That’s the place Wintermute sees a second, underused lever: lively steadiness sheet administration. Miners collectively maintain near 1% of all Bitcoin, a legacy of the “HODL” playbook that dominated earlier cycles.
On the similar time, many listed miners have been promoting down elements of their treasuries to cowl tighter margins and debt, with some even wiping out holdings altogether.
As a substitute of letting reserves sit idle till they’re dumped in a liquidity crunch, Wintermute argues miners ought to deal with BTC like a working asset. On the “lively” aspect, which means utilizing derivatives methods comparable to coated calls and money‑secured places to earn yield on holdings, at the price of taking some market danger.
On the “passive” aspect, miners can deploy cash into on‑chain lending markets, together with a brand new wrapped‑BTC market on Wildcat that Wintermute has highlighted, to generate curiosity revenue.
Wintermute’s backside line is that Bitcoin’s design is working, however the straightforward period for miners is over. Problem can nonetheless alter, but it can not overcome slower value progress, a charge market that has not scaled, and rising power prices that eat into each block reward.
The AI pivot will doubtless reshape the higher tier of the trade, turning some miners into full‑blown infrastructure firms.
