Bernstein says Bitcoin mining deals necessary for AI power crunch

Bernstein said that it remains overweight on the Bitcoin mining sector, citing the growing partnerships between Bitcoin mining companies that are necessary to address the power constraints of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.The investment manager’s Bitcoin mining industry deal tracker registered a new AI-related deal every week in July, with combined deals standing at more than 7.5 gigawatts or the contracted equivalent of $150 billion in multi-year contracts, according to a Thursday research note shared with Cointelegraph. The analysts said that third-party computing capacity from Bitcoin miners will remain highly valuable as access to power remains the AI industry’s real bottleneck amid growing political pushback against building new US data centers.Bitcoin mining stocks logged double-digit gains on Monday after Bitcoin mining companies Hut 8 and IREN announced major AI infrastructure deals. Hut 8 announced a 15-year, $9.8 billion lease for its AI data center campus and IREN disclosed $2.8 billion in cloud services contracts with AI developers.“IREN is beginning to convert that infrastructure advantage into contracted and more predictable revenue,” said Seeking Alpha co...