The Solution For AI's Energy Crisis Is Actually In The Hands Of Bitcoin Miners?

The explosive growth of artificial intelligence is triggering an unprecedented electricity demand, a demand that existing power supplies are struggling to meet. According to a recent Morgan Stanley research report dated the 21st, the United States alone faces a staggering 45-gigawatt (GW) power deficit for data centers between 2025 and 2028. This gap persists even when accounting for innovative solutions like natural gas, nuclear power, and other alternatives.

Unlike new power projects that can take years to connect to the grid, Bitcoin miners possess a critical advantage: ready-to-use, large-scale sites with established grid connections and substantial power capacity. The report highlights that US Bitcoin mining companies currently operate approximately 6.3 GW of large-scale sites, with an additional 2.5 GW under construction. This makes them the "fastest and lowest-execution-risk option" for AI companies desperately seeking immediate power access.

Currently, the stock valuations of many Bitcoin miners remain anchored to traditional mining economics, resulting in extremely low Enterprise Value per Watt (EV/Watt) metrics. However, Morgan Stanley's analysis suggests that converting these mining facilities into data centers could generate equity value of $5 to $8 per watt, far exceeding the current trading levels of these companies. For investors, this may represent a significant value mispricing and a potential alpha opportunity.

The Looming Power Bottleneck

AI's insatiable appetite for computing power faces a hard constraint: electricity. Morgan Stanley's models project US data center power demand to reach 65 GW from 2025 to 2028. In contrast, the grid's near-term available connection capacity is only about 15 GW. Even when combined with an estimated 6 GW of power for data centers already under construction, a massive 45 GW shortfall remains.

The report analyzes that even if all potential innovative measures—including natural gas turbine transactions (~15-20 GW), Bloom Energy's fuel cells (~5-8 GW), and leveraging existing nuclear power plants (~5-15 GW)—are successfully executed, US data center developers could still face a power shortage of approximately 5 to 15 GW by 2028. A recent survey by Schneider Electric corroborates this challenge, identifying "power acquisition" as the primary cause of data center project delays.

The Undervalued "Power Asset": The Unique Value of Bitcoin Mining Sites

In the face of this power bottleneck, Bitcoin mining sites present a seemingly unexpected yet logical solution. Morgan Stanley points out that these sites possess the core assets most valued by AI players: approved grid interconnections and large-scale power supply capacity. This allows them to bypass the multi-year "large-load interconnection" approval process typically required for new data center construction.

Data indicates that US Bitcoin miners control about 6.3 GW of operational large-scale sites (100 MW and above), another 2.5 GW under construction, and a further 8.6 GW of projects in development that have already secured grid interconnection permits. The report argues that these ready-made power resources are immensely valuable to AI companies. The timeline for converting these sites into AI data centers (approximately 18-24 months) aligns perfectly with the development cycle of bringing a Bitcoin mining site online with full power infrastructure.

Morgan Stanley emphasizes that the "Enterprise Value per Watt" (EV/Watt) is a key, yet market-overlooked, metric for evaluating these companies. The valuations of many Bitcoin mining firms remain significantly depressed based on this measure.

Substantial Value Creation Potential

The economic potential of converting Bitcoin mining sites into High-Performance Computing (HPC) data centers is substantial. Morgan Stanley illustrates this through a value creation analysis model: assuming a Bitcoin miner converts a 100-megawatt site into a "Powered Shell" data center (excluding chips and servers) and leases it to a client under a long-term agreement.

The analysis shows that if the tenant is a large hyperscale cloud provider, the project could create approximately $519 million in equity value, or $5.19 per watt. If the tenant is a newer "Neocloud" provider, the potential equity value creation is even higher, reaching around $781 million, or $7.81 per watt. This estimated value creation potential of $5 to $8 per watt far exceeds the current trading levels of many Bitcoin mining stocks. Such project structures are typically financed with high leverage through project finance, avoiding the commercial risks associated with holding the chips themselves, making them attractive to all parties involved.