MARA chief executive Fred Thiel says scarce electricity now generates significantly higher returns when used for artificial intelligence computing than for Bitcoin mining, a shift he believes is transforming how miners operate and invest.
Thiel, speaking in a 23 July interview with Natalie Brunell, argued that control of electricity – rather than ownership of mining hardware – is becoming the decisive factor in the Bitcoin mining sector’s future.
“You get a lot more money per electron if you’re doing it for AI than for bitcoin mining,” he said, describing how that economic reality is pushing traditional miners to reposition themselves as broader digital infrastructure and data centre developers.
Power becomes core asset
Thiel said the structural economics of Bitcoin mining are becoming more challenging, with the cryptocurrency’s programmed “halving” events steadily cutting the block reward available to miners even as power remains their largest ongoing cost.
In that environment, he believes miners need either to own power assets directly or build close, long-term relationships with utilities if they want to remain competitive.
Responding to those pressures, MARA – formally MARA Holdings – has spent the past year shifting its asset base. According to Thiel, the company began purchasing locations where its mining equipment had previously been hosted in late 2023 and early 2024, often paying less than the cost of rebuilding equivalent infrastructure from scratch.
By the end of 2024, he said, MARA controlled around 70% of the infrastructure that underpins its operations, marking a deliberate move away from pure hosting arrangements towards ownership of key facilities.
Expansion into energy and AI capacity
MARA has since moved further upstream into energy and large-scale computing capacity. Thiel said the company has partnered with Starwood on a platform aimed at delivering about 1 gigawatt of near-term computing capacity, with a longer-term route to more than 2.5 GW.
In July, MARA also agreed to acquire a sizeable “powered land” site in Texas, giving it potential access to roughly 2 GW of electricity for digital infrastructure projects. The company sees that location as a key asset for future deployment, including AI workloads.
Despite the growing emphasis on AI, Thiel rejected the idea that Bitcoin mining will disappear from MARA’s portfolio altogether.
“Bitcoin is a great way to optimize electrons, even in a data center-centric world,” he said, arguing that mining still makes economic sense in regions where electricity is free, stranded or unusually cheap, and might otherwise go unused. In such circumstances, he suggested, Bitcoin mining can act as a flexible buyer of last resort for power producers.
Industry-wide pivot towards data centres
MARA’s evolution reflects a broader shift across the mining industry, as several major players move into long-term, AI-focused data centre deals.
TeraWulf has agreed a 20-year lease with Anthropic for a 401 MW campus in Kentucky, which is expected to generate around $19bn in contracted revenue over the term. CleanSpark has secured a separate 20-year lease worth $6.6bn for its Sandersville, Georgia, site.
Hut 8 has fully contracted its 1 GW Beacon Point campus via two 15-year agreements with a combined base-term value of $19.6bn. IREN, meanwhile, has lifted its 2026 annualised AI Cloud revenue target to more than $4bn after signing $2.8bn of additional contracts.
Higher costs and community concerns
Thiel acknowledged that AI and high-performance computing facilities differ significantly from Bitcoin mines. They typically require greater upfront capital, more complex cooling technology and stricter delivery timelines to meet customer demands.
He also accepted that such sites can face local resistance, particularly over electricity consumption, water use and noise levels. However, he suggested much of the opposition is rooted in limited information about how modern facilities operate.
Even so, Thiel’s broader assessment was clear: for miners that already hold valuable grid connections and land suitable for development, Bitcoin is likely to become one of several possible uses for their electricity, rather than the dominant or exclusive focus it once was.
