Core Scientific paid $41.9 million to cancel 15 exahashes of new mining chips

Cancelling the order cost Core Scientific about $2.79 million for each exahash per second it declined, on roughly 15 EH/s, and that block is a little over 1.5% of the 940 EH/s the network averaged in the third quarter ^[1][2][11]. Cryptopolitan reports the cancelled hardware as the most efficient ever built ^[5]. A company that expected hashing to pay would take delivery and retire older machines instead. Cipher Digital said the same thing on a slower timetable, telling investors it will not spend on mining capex and expects to be out of the business by the end of 2027 ^[7].

CoinShares put the second-quarter weighted-average ex-tax cash cost of a bitcoin at about $75,500 against a $58,400 close, a gap of $17,100 a coin before tax, depreciation or interest ^[14][3]. Keel sold 1,085 coins at an average of $69,100, around $75 million, which was $6,400 below that cash cost and 18% above where the quarter ended ^[4][4][5]. It plans to liquidate the remaining 1,861 before year-end, worth about $109 million at the quarter-end price ^[4][6]. The wind-down took its gross margin to negative 285% as retired rigs were depreciated at speed ^[3].

One figure in the report does not survive subtraction. CoinShares gives the fourth-quarter 2025 cash cost as roughly $79,995 with bitcoin between $68,000 and $70,000, and says operators were down about $19,000 a coin; those inputs give $10,000 to $12,000 ^[15][7].

Hyperscale Data's Michigan deal prices power more legibly than any sector-wide contract total. More than $1.2 billion over ten years for 20 megawatts is $6 million per megawatt-year ^[9][8]. The option on another 32 megawatts lifts the ceiling to $3 billion, which values the incremental power at about $5.6 million per megawatt-year, some 6% under the first block ^[9][9]. The company did not name the tenant beyond calling it a California neocloud provider ^[9]. Chief executive William Horne said the shutdown lets the company focus the site's power and infrastructure on the incoming customer ^[10].

In my view these are now power landlords carrying tenant credit risk, and the conversion runs one way. Wolfie Zhao of The Energy Mag said, "Once that multi-gigawatt power infrastructure has been retrofitted to AI or HPC colocation, there is no turning back" ^[19]. Ethan Vera, chief operating officer of Luxor, said "Miners everywhere are being revalued as energy and AI infrastructure" ^[13]. The counter-thesis is that the revaluation rests on money not yet received: the sector's $70 billion-plus of AI and HPC agreements includes Core Scientific's own line of more than $14 billion in expected contract revenue ^[17]. Peter Schiff wrote on X that AI is not a tailwind for bitcoin but a rival, competing for the same capital, electricity and data center space ^[18].

What would break the thesis is a tenant that cannot fund a decade of payments, because a converted site with scrapped rigs and a sold treasury has no fallback revenue at all. Public miners have already sold more than 15,000 BTC since their treasuries peaked ^[16]. The permitting picture constrains the new business as well as the old: CoinShares counts at least 225 moratoriums or restrictions on data-center development across 30 states, 151 of them still in force ^[20].