Bitcoin mining economics faced continued pressure this week as hashprice lingered near all-time lows despite network difficulty adjustments.
While operators navigate thin margins, infrastructure demand in Texas has exploded with a massive influx of interconnection requests driven by data centers. Amid the challenging environment, MicroBT released its newest ASIC miner, IREN (NASDAQ: IREN) executed a significant capital raise, and Luxor expanded its service offerings into the burgeoning AI hardware market.
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ERCOT large load requests surge 270% in 2025
Power demand in Texas is accelerating rapidly, with interconnection requests in the ERCOT grid leaping 270% so far in 2025. A recent board report indicates that large load requests through 2030 now total 226 gigawatts, with 73% of that demand coming specifically from data centers.
This massive influx highlights the region’s embrace of AI and high-performance computing data centers, while cryptocurrency mines account for roughly 9% of the requests. Meeting this exponential demand will likely necessitate significant grid expansion, including increased reliance on battery storage and additional natural gas generation.
Luxor launches GPU trading desk
Luxor expanded its brokerage services by launching a GPU trading desk to complement its existing ASIC trading business. The new division targets a rapidly growing market, with projections estimating the total addressable market for GPUs to reach half a trillion dollars by 2032.
To differentiate itself from traditional resellers, Luxor plans to leverage its financial products, allowing miners to sell forward hashrate via Luxor’s derivatives desk to finance their expansion into high-performance computing (HPC). The move aims to support miners bridging the gap between Bitcoin mining and AI, utilizing existing relationships with finance and procurement teams across the industry.
IREN raises $2.3 billion via convertible note offering
IREN closed a $2.3 billion convertible note offering this past week, mostly utilizing the capital to refinance existing debt. The offering included tranches at 0.25% and 1% interest, allowing the company to retire older notes that carried higher rates of roughly 3.5%.
Beyond the immediate benefit of lowering the cost of capital, the successful raise serves as a signal of fundraising potential to the broader market, Luxor COO Ethan Vera said on the Mining Pod.
MicroBT launches M70 series
Hardware manufacturer MicroBT has launched its Whatsminer M70 series, featuring an efficiency rating of 12.5 joules per terahash (J/TH). While the new specifications offer a performance upgrade, the release comes during a difficult market cycle where equipment prices are depressed.
The new units, as with the new Antminer S23 releases from rival Bitmain, face stiff competition from a surplus of used Antminer S21 ASICs, which are currently trading at low valuations, Vera said. With profitability strained, miners may hesitate to invest in new capital expenditures when slightly less efficient hardware is available on the secondary market for a fraction of the cost.
Hashprice stays suppressed below $40
Bitcoin’s hashprice – a measure of bitcoin mining revenue – remains stuck in the gutter, hovering around $38 to $40/PH/day for nearly a month. This stagnation persists despite the network undergoing three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments, a rare sequence that has not occurred since the bear market of July 2022.
The recent downward adjustments were largely driven by early winter storms in Texas, where power prices spiked to $200 per megawatt hour, Vera said, forcing miners to curtail operations. While difficulty drops typically offer relief, the combination of aggressive hashrate growth and stagnating bitcoin prices has compressed revenue.
Header image by Mather T Rader.
