Bitcoin miners 'sitting on a gold mine' amid surging power demand: VanEck

Bitcoin miner stocks make for one of crypto’s most compelling investments as companies shift towards supporting artificial intelligence's power needs amid rising demand for electricity, according to VanEck’s Head of Digital Asset Research Matthew Sigel.

"They've been aggressively diversifying their bitcoin capacity to serve the AI market, and they still trade at a huge discount to other data center peers on a market cap-to-megawatt basis," Sigel told CNBC on Wednesday.

Across the bitcoin mining sector, miners are increasingly shifting from focusing almost exclusively on producing new tokens to providing AI companies with much-needed power and computing capacity. The energy-intensive data centers that bitcoin miners built to run mining machines have been shown to serve the power demands of AI infrastructure.

Because of that, bitcoin miners like Core Scientific are choosing to deploy capital differently. The miner recently said it plans to liquidate the majority of its bitcoin holdings this year so it can invest in expanding its AI and high-performance computing operations.

"Think about bitcoin as its impact on the electrical grid," Sigel added. "We now have these multiple demand shocks after decades of undersupply in the grid, and these miners were early to identify they were sitting on a gold mine in terms of the cost of capital they can earn by pivoting."

The rise of AI has triggered a surge in electricity consumption, pushing demand higher at a time when power supply in many regions remains constrained.

Sigel also promoted VanEck's NODE exchange-traded fund, an instrument that "seeks long-term capital appreciation by investing in companies and instruments that are meaningfully tied to the on-chain economy." He said the ETF was up over 30% since inception. NODE has $56 million in net assets since launching last May, according to VanEck's website.

"The equities are working. That's where we've been focused for more than a year, pivoting out of the altcoins and really focusing on where the intersection between crypto and the real world is generating cash flows," Sigel said.

Bitcoin miners shifting models

Like Core Scientific, bitcoin miner Riot Platforms has also signaled a changing business model.

“2025 marked a watershed year for Riot, defined by a strategic evolution in our business that has transformed our future trajectory,” Riot CEO Jason Les said last week. “By unlocking our large, nearly two-gigawatt power portfolio for high-demand data center infrastructure, we are driving significant shareholder value."

Over the 12 months, Core Scientific's shares are up 90%, with Riot trading 91% higher when compared to a year ago, according to The Block price data. Another bitcoin miner, MARA Holdings, however, is down 35% over the same period as higher mining costs and declining block production weighed on its 2025 results.