Bitcoin News Today: Bitcoin Miners Sell $2.6B Reserves as AI's Grid War Intensifies

Bitcoin's descent below $90,000 in late November 2025 has triggered a perfect storm for miners, as surging energy costs and a record hashrate compress margins, forcing operators to offload holdings at unprecedented rates. The cryptocurrency's 30% drop from its October peak of $126,000 has erased nearly $1.5 trillion in market value, with Bitcoin's price now testing support levels near $82,605 after a 23% monthly loss - the worst since 2022's collapse according to economic analysis. The sell-off has coincided with a 35% decline in perpetual futures open interest from October's $94 billion peak, signaling waning speculative appetite as reported by financial sources.

The pain is most acute for miners, whose profitability has been hammered by a 50% drop in hashprice - the industry benchmark for computing power revenue - to $34.49 per petahash per second, an all-time low according to market data. This collapse comes as electricity costs rise sharply in key mining hubs. In Texas's ERCOT grid, wholesale prices climbed 18% year-over-year in Q3 2025, driven by AI data-center demand, which is projected to double U.S. power consumption to 400 terawatt-hours by 2030 according to energy reports. Miners have responded by liquidating reserves: over 30,000 BTC, worth $2.6 billion, has moved to exchanges in November alone, reducing miner holdings to a record low of 1.803 million BTC according to mining reports.

The strain is evident in ETF flows, where BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) recorded a $523 million single-day outflow on Nov. 18 - the largest since its 2024 launch - and $1.425 billion in five days of redemptions according to market data. This mirrors broader risk aversion, with U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs losing $2.3 billion in outflows during November's first half according to financial analysis. Marathon Digital and Core Scientific have openly cited operational pressures, with the latter securing multi-year AI workload contracts at 3-4 times the revenue of Bitcoin mining according to industry reports.

Amid the turmoil, a $40 billion AI infrastructure consortium led by BlackRock, Nvidia, and Microsoft has emerged as a pivotal development. The Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership (AIP) aims to acquire Aligned Data Centers, a major player in hyperscale infrastructure, with $30 billion in equity and $100 billion in total capacity according to industry analysis. This move underscores the sector's pivot toward AI-driven workloads, as companies like C3.ai deepen integrations with Microsoft Copilot and Azure AI Foundry to streamline enterprise AI deployment. Meanwhile, IREN's 11.97% stock surge followed $9.7 billion and $5.8 billion contracts with Microsoft and Dell for GPU cloud services, highlighting the scramble for compute resources.

The confluence of falling Bitcoin prices, energy-driven mining costs, and AI infrastructure bets signals a structural shift. Miners are now competing with AI firms for grid capacity, while ETF outflows reflect institutional caution. According to analysts, as hashprice remains near unsustainable levels, they warn of a prolonged wave of miner capitulation unless Bitcoin rallies to offset operational losses.