A sector reallocating itself
The headline is real: publicly listed Bitcoin miners sold roughly 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026 — more than they sold in all of 2025 — and a large share of that went to fund a move into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Some went the whole way. In February, Bitfarms told the market it is "no longer a Bitcoin company," rebranding as Keel Infrastructure and describing itself as an infrastructure-first developer of HPC and AI data centers.
This is not a narrative flourish. Bernstein estimates listed miners have contracted around 6 gigawatts of power to AI customers across 17 deals worth more than $110 billion over two years — roughly 10% of all AI data centers currently under construction in the United States.
Does it threaten Bitcoin?
The natural worry is network security: if miners unplug machines, does Bitcoin weaken? The data warrants attention without alarm. Hashrate posted its first first-quarter decline since 2020, down a few percent year to date — a genuine break in a six-year growth trend, but a small move, and the network continued producing blocks normally throughout.
Two things temper the concern. Decentralization arguably matters more than absolute hashrate, and the withdrawn capacity is a modest fraction of a network that grew roughly tenfold over five years. CoinShares has projected hashrate could resume climbing toward 1.8 zettahashes per second by the end of 2026 if Bitcoin recovers toward $100,000 — a reminder that the pivot is driven by weak mining margins, and would slow if those margins returned.
Where MARA sits
MARA sits deliberately in the middle of this. It has added AI and HPC capability while keeping large-scale mining rather than abandoning it — a diversification, not a conversion. That posture is consistent with Signal21's constructive standing view on the stock: the optionality is real, but it must still convert into signed tenants, contracted megawatts and material non-mining revenue before it reprices the business. The sector is not leaving Bitcoin so much as discovering that the asset it truly owns is power. This is market analysis, not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.