Bitcoin Miners Face 230 GW Queue as AI Power War Escalates in Texas

The Grid Bottleneck Just Got Real

The theoretical battle for energy between Bitcoin miners and AI hyperscalers has officially hit the physical layer. New filings from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) reveal a staggering surge in interconnection requests: the queue for large load connections ballooned to over 230 gigawatts (GW) by late 2025, nearly quadrupling from 63 GW just a year prior.

The crucial detail? More than 70% of these requests are now tied to data centers, primarily for Artificial Intelligence and High-Performance Computing (HPC). For Bitcoin miners, the era of easy access to stranded energy is ending; the era of fighting trillion-dollar cap tech firms for substation space has begun.

The Economics of Displacement

The squeeze is visible in the order flow. While Bitcoin miners historically pitched themselves as “flexible loads,” willing to shut down during peak demand, AI data centers require firm, always-on power (99.99% uptime). They are also willing to pay a premium for it. This disparity is forcing a market re-pricing of grid capacity.

This power arbitrage is reshaping corporate strategy. Core Scientific (CORZ), a bellwether for the sector, exemplifies the shift. After shareholders rejected a $9 billion acquisition offer from CoreWeave in October 2025, the company doubled down on hosting contracts. By converting mining infrastructure to HPC-ready sites, they are effectively arbitraging the difference between the volatile hashprice and fixed, high-margin AI compute contracts.

Network Data: The Miner’s Margin

The stress is showing on-chain. Bitcoin’s network hashrate has slipped to 1.019 EH/s (exahashes per second) as of January 18, down 6% daily, as marginal operators unplug. Meanwhile, mining difficulty sits at 146.47 T, with projections indicating a hike to ~148 T later this week. With Bitcoin trading near $95,000, margins remain compressed for fleets running older efficiency machines ( >25 J/TH).

The question for 2026 isn’t whether surplus energy can be mined, but whether that surplus is structural enough to contract, and whether miners can hold their position as AI pushes up the clearing price for firm supply.

The Hard Constraint

ERCOT’s pipeline is a signal, not just a statistic. With the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasting data center electricity demand to double by 2026, the value of an energization date is skyrocketing. Miners holding valid interconnection agreements are now sitting on real estate assets more valuable than the hashrate they produce. Those without power contracts are simply out of luck.