Bitcoin hits a two-month high: Mining companies' AI transformation stocks rally, Hive and Bitfarms lead with an 11% increase

On April 15, 2026, Bitcoin (BTC) pulled back from its intraday high, and Gate market data shows its quote was approximately $74,243. Earlier the same day, BTC briefly climbed above $76,100, reaching a stage high level for nearly two months. Meanwhile, AI-transformation concept stocks—led by Hive Digital (HIVE) and Bitfarms (now renamed Keel Infrastructure)—rose across the board, with both companies’ single-day stock gains exceeding 11%, leading the entire sector.

This market phenomenon is not an isolated event. Since the second half of 2025, the shift by Bitcoin mining companies toward artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) data center infrastructure has continued to accelerate, and the industry landscape is undergoing a profound restructuring.

BTC surges then pulls back; transformation-concept stocks move

On Tuesday, April 14, 2026 (Eastern Time), Bitcoin broke through $76,100, reaching its highest level in two months. In the same trading session, Hive Digital’s stock closed at $2.42, up nearly 12% on the day; Bitfarms (now trading under the name Keel Infrastructure) rose more than 10%, closing at $2.35, its highest price since January.

Along with these two miners leading the rally, the stocks of AI-transformation miners including Canaan, Bitdeer, and IREN also recorded gains of about 7% to 10%. This round of gains occurred against a macro backdrop in which the US-Iran conflict had eased somewhat; the US stock market rebounded in tandem, with the S&P 500 having essentially recovered the losses during the conflict period, approaching the record high set in January this year.

Transformation backdrop: from mining losses to monetizing electricity

The large-scale shift by Bitcoin miners to AI/HPC infrastructure is not a short-term speculative move, but a systemic response to structural pressures facing the industry. The core driving factors can be summarized into the following four points.

First, mining economics continues to deteriorate. The 2024 Bitcoin halving event cut miners’ block rewards in half, sharply compressing mining profit margins. Industry data shows that by Q4 2025, the average mining cost of listed miners had risen to about $80,000 per coin, while the BTC price was around $70,000 during the same period; mining one Bitcoin resulted in a loss of about $20,000. The traditional profitable mining model can no longer be sustained.

Second, the hash price has fallen to historic lows. In Q1 2026, the hash price dropped to about $29/PH/s/day, far below the $36 to $38/PH/s/day seen in Q4 2025, putting further pressure on mining revenues.

Third, AI compute demand surges, and electricity becomes the core bottleneck. Global AI compute demand is growing exponentially, shifting the bottleneck from “chip supply” to “power access.” In the US, the cycle to build a new substation lasts 5 to 7 years, making already energized mining farms a scarce resource. The land and power assets that miners secured early have become the key chips for entering the AI track.

Fourth, capital-market pricing diverges clearly. For miners with exposure to AI business, valuations are about 12.3 times future revenue, while pure-play mining companies are only 5.9 times—capital is concentrating toward AI transformation targets.

The following key milestones outline the clear trajectory of this transformation:

Hive’s gradual transformation and Bitfarms’ complete restructuring

BTC market context

As of April 15, 2026, Gate market data shows Bitcoin’s latest quote at approximately $74,243. Its 24-hour trading volume is $517 million, market cap is $1.33 trillion, and market share is 55.27%. Over the past 24 hours, the price change was -0.12%; over the past 7 days, cumulative decline was 2.97%; over the past 30 days, cumulative decline was 1.99%; and over the past year, cumulative decline was 19.15%. The high of $76,100 reached in this round is the highest level since mid-February 2026.

Hive Digital: the gradual path from miner to compute-power provider

Hive Digital’s transformation path shows a “gradually layered” characteristic. The company operates about 300 MW of hydropower infrastructure in Paraguay as its foundation. Then in March 2026, through its BUZZ high-performance computing unit, it officially launched its first GPU cluster.

This cluster is deployed at a Tier III data center in Asunción, supported by Paraguay’s largest telecommunications operator. Academic research teams from Columbia University are conducting large language model (LLM) pretraining and optimization experiments on this platform, with parameter counts ranging from 0.2B to 8B+. The company positions this deployment as a proof-of-concept project, aiming to accumulate operational data and experience for commercial AI compute expansion before 2027.

Meanwhile, Hive has started to scale back its traditional Bitcoin mining business, including reducing the operating scale of ASIC miners in Sweden, and reallocating capital to build GPU data centers in Canada.

Keel Infrastructure: a restructuring sample that abandons the miner identity

Bitfarms’ transformation is more thorough. On April 1, 2026, the company formally completed the legal migration of its corporate entity from Canada to the US state of Delaware, renamed itself Keel Infrastructure Corp., and began trading on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange under the code KEEL starting April 6.

In its official statement, CEO Ben Gagnon explicitly said, “We are no longer a Bitcoin company. We are a North America HPC/AI data center infrastructure-focused developer and operator.”

The company’s core assets are an energy infrastructure portfolio totaling 2.2 GW, distributed across Pennsylvania, Quebec, and Washington State. As of March 27, 2026, total cash and Bitcoin holdings were approximately $520 million, of which energized capacity was 341 MW, and locked-in future delivery capacity was 430 MW.

Unlike the “coin-hoarding faction” represented by Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), Keel treats its approximately 2,500 BTC as a liquidity tool; CEO Gagnon said it will “opportunistically” sell Bitcoin to support the construction of AI infrastructure. The company expects its first AI-related revenue to be realized as early as the first half of 2027 at its Moses Lake site in Washington.

At present, the total value of AI/HPC contracts cumulatively signed by listed miners exceeds $70 billion. Some operators expect that by the end of 2026, the share of AI business revenue could be as high as 70%. Typical examples include: the 12-year contracts totaling $10.2 billion signed by CoreWeave and Core Scientific, involving 590 MW of HPC capacity; TeraWulf disclosing that its HPC contract total revenue corresponding to 522 MW at its Lake Mariner facility is $12.8 billion; and Hut 8 signing a 15-year, $7 billion leasing agreement with Fluidstack.

Valuation troughs and path divergence

Mainstream market view

Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, said in a recent CNBC interview that Bitcoin miners “are sitting on a gold mine.” He pointed out that miners are actively diversifying their Bitcoin compute power allocations into the AI market, and that compared with other data center peers, these companies still trade at significant discounts in terms of market cap and megawatt metrics—meaning there is substantial room for valuation repair.

Sigel further analyzed that the US power grid has experienced decades of supply shortages and now faces multiple demand shocks. Miners were among the first to realize the value of capital returns achievable through transformation, while the financial market has not yet fully reflected this strategic positioning.

Industry path divergence

Within the broad direction of miners’ AI transformation, three differentiated paths have already taken shape.

Bitcoin reserve maximization route. Represented by Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), continuously accumulating BTC as the core balance-sheet asset without selling. This is the extreme “coin-hoarding faction” strategy choice.

Cash-flow management route: mining means selling. Represented by Riot Platforms, treating BTC as operating income rather than a long-term asset reserve, maintaining cash-flow stability by continuously selling.

Monetization route: energy and compute infrastructure. Represented by Keel Infrastructure, treating power assets as the core value carrier by providing data center capacity to ultra-large cloud service providers through a leasing model. This is also the direction Hive is pursuing.

The divergence among these three routes reflects different judgments by miners regarding their resource endowments, capital costs, and risk preferences.

Sources of transformation funding

The funding for miners’ AI transformation mainly comes from two channels: one is leveraged financing, and the other is selling Bitcoin reserves. Data shows that the total number of BTC sold cumulatively by listed miners has exceeded 15,000 coins, with Core Scientific, Bitdeer, and Riot Platforms among the main sellers. In Q1 2026, the enterprise-side BTC selling scale was already close to $2 billion.

Rebuilding miner valuations and the compute-power landscape

Miner sector valuation reshaping

Miners’ AI transformation is reshaping the industry’s capital structure and valuation framework. Miners with a clear AI transformation path receive higher market valuation premiums, while companies that adhere to a pure mining model face valuation pressure. Since VanEck’s NODE ETF launched in May 2025, it has risen more than 30%, with the net asset value reaching $56 million—showing that institutional investors’ recognition of the miner transformation narrative continues to increase.

Over the past 12 months, Core Scientific, which has developed an AI business, has seen its stock price rise by about 90%, and Riot is up about 91%. Meanwhile, MARA Holdings—which has higher mining costs and slower progress in its AI deployment—has fallen by about 35%.

Marginal changes in Bitcoin network security

As miners shift capital and compute-power resources into the AI sector, potential impacts on Bitcoin network security may arise. Bitcoin’s total network hash rate declined from a peak of about 1,160 EH/s in October 2025 to around 920 EH/s, accompanied by multiple consecutive negative difficulty adjustments. Although compute power recovered somewhat to about 1,020 EH/s in Q1 2026, the long-term trend still needs continuous observation.

However, a decline in hash rate is not entirely without positive effects. For operators still participating in Bitcoin mining, a temporary decrease in the intensity of hash competition means improved efficiency of unit compute output, which may lead to faster profit recovery when BTC prices rebound.

Evolution of the AI infrastructure supply landscape

Miners’ large-scale entry into the AI data center space is changing the supply landscape of AI infrastructure. Traditional data center construction cycles are long and impose stringent requirements for power connectivity, but miners’ existing stockpile of power assets and construction experience give them a natural competitive advantage. Ultra-large cloud service providers are able to rapidly expand the scale of AI compute deployments by signing long-term co-location agreements with miners.

Worth noting is that some miners adopt a “landlord model”—leasing power-guaranteed sites to ultra-large customers rather than directly competing in cloud services. This model positions miners as a layer of infrastructure, forming a complementary relationship with cloud service providers rather than a competing one.

Conclusion

Hive and Bitfarms leading the rally again in this round is another concentrated demonstration of the miners’ AI transformation narrative. Bitcoin reaching a two-month high provides a short-term catalyst, but the true structural driving forces come from the dual squeeze between worsening mining economics and surging AI electricity demand. The industry is undergoing an identity shift from “Bitcoin compute-power provider” to “AI infrastructure operator,” a process that brings opportunities for valuation re-rating while also involving multiple uncertainties, including revenue realization cycles, capital consumption pacing, and industry competitive dynamics.