Bitcoin (BTC) miners raised $11 billion in convertible bonds last year on the back of their transformation into artificial intelligence data centers.
According to TheMinerMag, miners completed 18 convertible bond transactions after the April 2024 Bitcoin halving, when block rewards were reduced by 50%.
Average convertible bond issuance more than doubled, with mining companies MARA, Cipher Mining, IREN and TeraWulf each raising $1 billion through single bond issuances. Some products offer coupons as low as 0%, demonstrating investors’ willingness to waive interest payments in exchange for potential stock price appreciation.
Convertible bond transactions from July 2024 to October 2025. source: the minor mug
In contrast, most convertible bonds issued by Bitcoin miners in the previous year ranged from $200 million to $400 million.
The mining industry has diversified into AI data centers to address the revenue shortfall after the April 2024 halving. Miners continue to struggle with challenging business models that are affected by tokenomics, trade policy, supply chain issues, rising energy costs, and more.
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Miners prepare for hashrate wars and energy-intensive AI operations
According to a recent report from investment manager VanEck, miner debt has increased by 500% in the last year, totaling $12.7 billion.
But VanEck analysts Nathan Frankowitz and Matthew Siegel said these debt levels reflect a fundamental problem in the mining industry: high capital expenditures on mining hardware, which in some cases must be upgraded every year.
“Historically, miners have relied on the stock market rather than debt to cover these high capital investment costs,” they wrote, calling the high hardware costs of staying competitive “melting ice.”
Bitcoin’s network hashrate continues to rise.
The Bitcoin mining hash rate, or the total amount of computing power securing the Bitcoin network, also continues to rise, forcing miners to expend more and more computing and energy resources over time.
In October, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright proposed regulatory changes to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that would allow data centers and miners to connect directly to the energy grid.
This allows these energy-intensive applications to meet energy demands while simultaneously acting as a controllable load resource for the energy grid, balancing and stabilizing electrical infrastructure during peak demand times and reducing excess energy during low demand times.
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