U.S. Bitcoin miners are moving deeper into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (large-scale data processing) as lower Bitcoin prices, reduced block rewards and elevated mining difficulty squeeze returns. Bitcoin has recently traded around $63,000 to $65,000, about half the record high near $125,000 reached last year, while the April 2024 halving cut the reward for mining a block to 3.125 Bitcoin from 6.25 Bitcoin. Network mining difficulty is about 127 trillion, and hashprice (daily revenue per unit of computing power) has stayed in the $30 range per PH/s, a level that CoinShares says leaves some operators with older machines losing money when electricity costs exceed 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. Riot Platforms highlighted the shift by signing a 20-year agreement on August 10 to lease 191 megawatts of data center capacity in Rockdale, Texas, for about $9.1 billion, with total value potentially rising to $16.1 billion if extension options are used. Bitdeer is also expanding, with second-quarter AI cloud revenue up about tenfold from a year earlier and a Norway contract that could generate about $4.7 billion over 16 years, while Kyl Infrastructure is halting all U.S. Bitcoin mining and converting those sites to AI and HPC use. Bernstein said miners had signed 19 data center agreements worth more than $135 billion as of mid-July, underscoring an industry view that mining businesses are increasingly becoming power infrastructure platforms for AI companies.