In March 2026, Bitcoin was experiencing a narrow fluctuation around $68,000. Compared to the low before the last halving, it had recorded a considerable increase, but the short-term trend was becoming increasingly stagnant. Amidst a backdrop of sideways trading at high prices, a sell-off from a mining company and news about a shift towards computing power became key clues to understanding the current cycle: Nakamoto Inc. sold 284 BTC at an average price of about $70,422, while Bitdeer publicly emphasized in industry reports that it would accelerate its transformation towards high-performance computing and AI-related businesses. Meanwhile, veteran trader Peter Brandt stated that Bitcoin may not reach a new high until 2027, which sharply contrasts with the optimistic expectations of some bullish market participants. As prices hovered in a range, mining companies were both reducing their holdings at high levels and betting on new AI narratives, leading to the core question of whether they were cashing out to survive or positioning themselves for a longer-term bull market.

Mining Companies Sell Coins for Self-Rescue: The Sample Significance of 284 Bitcoins

Nakamoto Inc. was reported to have sold 284 BTC at an average price of about $70,422, and this transaction is relatively concentrated, seen as a typical action of a single entity cashing out at high levels. For most mining companies, their BTC reserves on paper serve as both a cushion on the balance sheet and the “last insurance” to cope with electricity, equipment depreciation, operational team, and venue costs. When Bitcoin fluctuated around $68,000, after previously spiking to higher levels, choosing to draw on reserves while the price was still near historical highs reflects a compromise between real cash flow pressure and risk management.

Rising electricity prices and capital expenditures driven by chip and machine upgrades mean that mining companies face higher operational thresholds in this cycle. The ongoing narrow fluctuations have weakened the mining bonuses from “favorable conditions”, while electricity and operational bills have never paused. This has forced some mining companies to liquidate portions of their BTC reserves to maintain daily operations and future expansion. From a financial perspective, this represents a choice to exchange some potential upside for current survival certainty.

Within the Bitcoin community, “long-term holding” is regarded as a faith totem, but the reality for mining companies involves a constant tug-of-war between short-term liquidity needs and long-term bullish beliefs. The sale of 284 BTC is not just a cold number; it reflects a more representative tension: when the price remains relatively high but the volatility slows down, corporate management is more likely to choose “selling at highs to ensure survival” over “holding out for super highs”. Coupled with Bitcoin’s approximately 2.12% daily intraday increase and its narrow fluctuation pattern, placing the sell-off window at high price levels is a rational measure of risk-reward, rather than a simple bearish stance.

From Mining to Computing Power Factory: Bitdeer’s AI Bet

Unlike simply selling coins, Bitdeer is attempting to address the same uncertain cycle through a different path. According to industry reports, the company is publicly emphasizing its acceleration towards high-performance computing and AI-related business transformation, upgrading traditional mining infrastructure into more generalized computing and data center services. For a mining company, this is not only a narrative update but also a reconfiguration of the profit model: evolving from a “mining factory” reliant on single asset prices to a computing power factory serving multiple industries and clients.

The mining infrastructure—including low-cost electricity access, cooling and server room design, and rack and network layout—highly overlaps with the needs of AI training and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers. The distinction lies more in chip types, server forms, and upper-layer software stacks than in underlying energy consumption and physical structure. Therefore, mining companies possess a natural advantage: they already occupy substantial amounts of land close to energy sources and have experience in building and managing large-scale data centers. Extending this to AI training clusters is a path-dependent expansion.

From a profit-driven viewpoint, the violent fluctuations of Bitcoin prices and rising mining difficulty are compressing the marginal profits of mining operations. When coin prices stabilize around $68,000, and the volatility of mining returns exceeds that of traditional data center leasing, finding a curve of more stable cash flow and diverse clients becomes a pressing topic for the boards of mining companies. Under this pressure, transitioning to AI and HPC is not just chasing a new trend but hedging against the risks of “single asset exposure”.

Once this trend of transformation unfolds within the industry, the core narrative of the computing power market will also shift: from “coin mining machines and on-chain security providers” to “generalized computing and data infrastructure suppliers”. Mining companies will begin to not only execute the security budgets for Bitcoin but may also become foundational service providers for AI model training, scientific computing, and even traditional internet enterprises. This suggests that their pricing logic in capital markets may gradually detach from pure dependence on BTC prices, shifting towards valuation based on “comprehensive computing abilities” and “client diversification”.

Price Fluctuations and Diverging Expectations: Brandt’s Time Play

As mining companies respond to reality through selling and transformation, a judgment from veterans in the traditional market adds a longer time scale to this round of competition. Trader Peter Brandt bluntly remarked, “Bitcoin will not reach new highs in 2026; it may have to wait until 2027 for a new high.” This implies that, in his view, the upward rhythm of this cycle will be significantly prolonged, requiring investors to accept prolonged consolidation and repetition before welcoming new price peaks.

Parallel with this view are current market realities: Bitcoin prices are fluctuating around $68,000, with short-term slight intraday increases coexisting with high-level consolidation, and some bulls still firmly believe that macro liquidity and the halving effect will jointly promote new highs within 2026. Such diverging expectations compel mining companies, situated at the forefront of cash flow, to make judgments between “believing in super cycles” and “anticipating a longer winter”.

Brandt views Bitcoin from the perspective of commodities and cycle trading, integrating it into the more traditional path of “bubble—clearing—regaining confidence—new highs”, tending to believe that each cycle is stretched over time. Under this view, Bitcoin resembles a long-cycle asset that has been deeply financialized by institutions, derivatives, and macro funds, rather than a “template target” that follows a fixed script every four years.

For the decision-makers in mining companies, such a pessimistic or conservative timetable does not directly dictate their actions but will significantly influence the pace of selling and transformation. If the expectation of the next genuine historical high is postponed to 2027, then moderately reducing part of the reserves at elevated levels in 2026 and proactively laying out AI and HPC businesses could help lock in cash while prices are still supported, avoiding being forced to liquidate at much lower prices during a deeper retracement. In other words, Brandt's prolonged cycle expectation provides a seemingly conservative yet relatively robust decision-making framework for “cashing out part of the chips now while simultaneously expanding the new track”.

Narrative Diversion: RWA Increase and Computing Power Asset Repricing

As Bitcoin remains in narrow fluctuations, capital has not paused in its quest for new narratives. On-chain data shows that the RWA sector increased by approximately 2.16% over 24 hours, creating a subtle contrast with Bitcoin's approximately 2.12% intraday increase and high-level consolidation. This slight disparity fundamentally reflects the balance of capital among different narratives and assets: on one side is Bitcoin, already relatively mature and subject to numerous speculative paths, and on the other side is the RWA sector, regarded as a new narrative of "traditional assets on the blockchain".

Against this backdrop, there are signs of more frequent rotation of funds between on-chain assets, RWA narratives, and Bitcoin-related stocks and mining companies. Some capital seeks new configurations linked to real asset returns through RWA; others indirectly incur multiple exposures to BTC prices, AI computational power, and data center demands by investing in mining companies and computing power firms. This rotation means mining companies are no longer merely “leverage amplifiers of Bitcoin prices” but have become nodes at the intersection of multiple capital narratives.

As mining companies transition from a single Bitcoin exposure to include AI, high-performance computing, and diversified cloud computing business, the secondary market will inevitably need to rewrite their valuation framework. Traditionally, the valuation of mining companies has been highly positively correlated with BTC prices, viewed as classic “Bitcoin beta assets”—with volatility much greater than the spot market, magnifying both risks and returns. Once the share of revenue from AI training, enterprise-level computing rentals, and other Web2 clients increases, investors will have to reassess their cash flow stability and cyclical sensitivity.

From a mid-term perspective, these computing power companies may gradually evolve from singular “Bitcoin beta assets” to “multi-narrative convergence assets”: sensitive to BTC prices while also able to share in the benefits of growth in AI and data center demand, and potentially forming part of the “digital infrastructure of the traditional world” alongside sections like RWA. If this change in positioning is accepted by mainstream capital, it will directly affect their price-to-earnings ratios, price-to-sales ratios, and other valuation multiples, thereby influencing their choices regarding selling coins and expanding production.

Price Consolidation Period: Who Cashes Out the Past, Who Bets on the Future

Looking back at the slice of March 2026, two responses from mining companies to the same uncertain cycle can be observed: on one hand, selling coins at high levels to bolster capital, and on the other hand increasing investment in AI computing power and high-performance computing businesses. The former is a realization of past profits and an enhancement of survival cushions, while the latter is a bet on future income structures and market positioning. The two are not contradictory but resemble synchronized adjustments on either end of the same balance sheet—in locking in some historical gains while allowing for more options in potentially longer and more complex future cycles.

Brandt’s judgment that new highs may be postponed to 2027, combined with the internal market's differentiated expectations regarding the halving effect, macro liquidity, and institutional entry timings, renders the time dimension the most critical and difficult-to-price variable in this round of competition. For long-term holders, consolidation and retracement are merely negligible noise over a longer horizon; but for managers of mining companies who must pay electricity bills, salaries, and plan capital expenditures daily, every year’s cash flow fluctuations could be a matter of life and death.

In the next one to two years, the price path of Bitcoin, the pace of mining companies’ transformations, and the direction of capital narratives are likely to form a triple resonance: if BTC prices maintain relative stability at high levels while AI and high-performance computing demand continue to expand, those mining companies that transition in advance and boast robust cash flows may gain higher valuation premiums in secondary markets; conversely, if BTC prices experience severe downturns or prolonged stagnation, while AI capital expenditures fall short of expectations, such transformation projects may be repriced, even dragging down overall corporate performance.

For ordinary investors, what is truly worth continuous tracking is no longer the fluctuation of exchange rates at a single point in time but rather two structural data lines: one is the changes in mining companies' coin holdings, which directly reflect the industry’s subjective judgments about future coin prices and cash flow safety margins; the other is capital expenditure and capacity planning data related to AI and high-performance computing, which will determine whether computing power companies can smoothly switch from “mining factories” to “general computing infrastructure” as the main storyline for the medium to long term. Until these two lines become clearer, the actions of mining companies, both selling and buying, conceal not only the settlement of the past bull market but also possibly anticipatory layouts for the next, more complex cycle.

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