Riot Signs $9.1 Billion Deal with Anthropic, Public Miners Sell ~28,000 BTC
The Industry-Wide Pivot from Bitcoin Mining into Artificial Intelligence Continues
Download your FREE Bitcoin self-custody guide from the Bitcoin Way to learn how to secure your stack properly
RIOT Signs 20-Year, $9.1 Billion Ai Deal
RIOT Platforms ($RIOT) surged in after-hours trading on Tuesday following their press release announcing a $9.1 billion deal “with one of the world’s leading frontier AI labs.” It is widely suspected that the Ai lab in question is Anthropic.
This is an unsurprising trend continuation: large scale Bitcoin miners are pivoting their operations and treasuries into Ai. Not necessarily because Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining itself is a bad idea, rather, the demand from Ai labs for their data center capacity is so strong that they’re willing to pay $9.1 billion over 20 years.
At the start of the year, public miners held a combined ~127,000 BTC but their holdings are down to ~99,000 BTC today. Early year sales from public miners are an underdiscussed contributing factor Bitcoin’s poor price performance in 2026.
Mining difficulty continues to drop, down ~18% from it’s November peak in the longest stretch of declining hashrate in Bitcoin’s history. In other words, the rest of the miners are earning ~18% more Bitcoin now than they were 10 months ago. The exodus of the largest players in the industry is improving the economics for the miners that remain.
Bitcoin’s total network hashrate is unlikely to repeat the persistent growth rate it experienced for the first 16 years of Bitcoin’s existence.
The Blockware Team has put together a free guide to help you navigate the Bitcoin mining landscape in 2026; covering the how to acquire a 100% tax deduction via Bonus Depreciation and the current economics of a mining machine.
This guide is free to read. Fill out the form here and we will email you the guide.
