It was a packed week for Bitcoin mining, headlined by Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) shareholders voting down the multi-billion dollar CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) acquisition offer.
Meanwhile, CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) and TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) pushed deeper into AI hosting, and global hashrate surged past 1.1 Zettahash as China and Russia quietly powered up. A proposed Bitcoin soft-fork also sparked debate, closing out a volatile week for miners balancing economics, politics, and technology.
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Core Scientific's shareholders voted "no" on the proposed acquisition by CoreWeave, ending what could have been one of the biggest data-center M&A deals of the year for the mining sector. Although expected by insiders, the deal's failure alters the landscape for investable compute by bringing hundreds of megawatts back onto the market for companies like Microsoft or Oracle.
Looking forward, Blockspace expects to see Core Scientific focus on high density compute over Bitcoin mining, despite a recent agreement with Jack Dorsey's Block (NYSE: XYZ) and their new Proto Miner.
CleanSpark announced a new Texas site acquisition with 385 MW of power pipeline, signaling its intent to integrate AI and HPC workloads alongside traditional mining. The Las Vegas-based company is yet the next major miner to swap its compute footprint from mining to HPC, and it expects the greenfield site to be online by the end of 2027.
Markets began pricing in the eventual usage of CleanSpark's power pipeline for AI in July, following the departure of CEO Zack Bradford. The stock is up nearly 100% since July 2025.
TeraWulf entered into a 25-year deal with FluidStack, one of the longest contracts yet between a Bitcoin miner and an AI hosting firm. The agreement adds long-term revenue visibility and marks another step in miners' pivot toward high-margin compute workloads.
The deal is one of the longest known contracts, underscoring TeraWulf's focus on the 'powershell' model of building out AI factories.
Despite access to U.S. capital markets, Western miners might be slipping against global deployment of hashrate, particularly in China and Russia. Luxor's Ethan Vera noted that much of this expansion is opaque to U.S. markets and accelerating faster than expected.
"Every news cycle that we're going to talk about today is miners stopping purchasing their machines and going to AI. So where is this hash rate coming from? It's China and Russia," Vera said.
Vera expects both countries to be major players in hashrate expansion over the next few years, particularly as more US-based companies pivot to AI/HPC.