Bitdeer liquidates a reserve of 943.1 BTC, is it the renowned mining company "Winter is Coming" or the AI sector's "Breakthrough and Rebirth"?

February 21, 2026 — Singapore-based Bitcoin mining company Bitdeer (鹿比特) released a weekly report on its official social media channels that broke industry conventions. Data shows that as of February 20, 2026, Bitdeer’s proprietary Bitcoin holdings (excluding customer deposits) have dropped to zero. During the reporting period, the company produced 189.8 BTC and sold all of it, resulting in a net reduction of 943.1 BTC, completely clearing its Bitcoin reserves.

This “deleveraging” sale has caused significant turbulence in the crypto mining industry. Notably, this move occurred at a highly dramatic time: according to the latest data, Bitdeer’s self-mining hash rate just surpassed 63.2 EH/s, overtaking the veteran giant Marathon Digital’s 60.4 EH/s, making it the largest publicly traded self-mining operation in the world by hash rate.

Owning the top hash rate globally but choosing not to hold a single Bitcoin—this seemingly paradoxical strategic choice not only signals the end of the traditional “mine-and-HODL” (hold on for dear life) philosophy but also reflects how, under extreme hash rate economics, leading mining companies are accelerating their transformation toward Wall Street-style corporate finance operations and AI computing infrastructure providers.

Bitdeer’s decision to liquidate its Bitcoin reserves is not due to a bearish outlook but is constrained by the severely deteriorating fundamentals of the current mining industry. To understand the necessity of this move, one must analyze the underlying data of the Bitcoin network.

Recent data shows that on February 19, network difficulty surged from 125.86T to 144.39T, a 14.72% increase—the largest single adjustment since May 2021. This difficulty adjustment effectively wiped out all operational breathing room miners had earlier this year. The sharp rise in difficulty means miners must deploy more hash power and electricity to maintain their previous share of production.

More critically, Hashprice—the core metric measuring miner profitability—has collapsed. Hashprice indicates the expected fiat income per unit of hash power (usually per PH/s) per day. Due to the dual pressures of skyrocketing difficulty and volatile Bitcoin prices, the entire network’s Hashprice has plummeted below $30 per PH/s per day, approaching historic lows.

With Hashprice falling below $30, most miners using older hardware or facing electricity costs above $0.06 per kWh are already at the edge of profitability or in negative margins. For a giant like Bitdeer, despite scale advantages and some energy cost benefits, the severely compressed profit margins make it impossible to continue risking assets anchored in highly volatile cryptocurrencies.

In today’s environment of high capital costs, holding Bitcoin becomes a decision with enormous opportunity costs. Each BTC held means less cash flow available for expansion, equipment upgrades, or debt repayment. During periods of razor-thin margins, “cash is king” replaces “HODL,” and liquidating holdings becomes the most direct defense against liquidity crunches.

Wall Street Financial Engineering: Convertible Bonds and Defensive Debt Restructuring

Faced with declining hash rate yields, Bitdeer’s solutions extend beyond simply selling Bitcoin; its actions in the capital markets demonstrate sophisticated financial engineering. On February 20, Bitdeer announced an increase in its private placement of convertible senior notes to $325 million, with settlement expected by February 24. Initial purchasers also hold an option to buy an additional $50 million in notes.

This $375 million financing is meticulously structured as a textbook example of balance sheet defense and strategic restructuring:

Debt Extension and Exchange ($138.2 million): Bitdeer plans to use $138.2 million to repurchase its existing 5.25% convertible senior notes due 2029. This “refinance” operation, in the current complex interest rate environment, aims to optimize capital structure, extend debt duration, and secure more ample cash runway for future strategic shifts. During a period of low Hashprice, alleviating short-term debt repayment pressures is critical for survival.

Cap-Linked Options (up to $29.2 million): Bitdeer allocated $29.2 million for capped call transactions—highly specialized derivatives used as “anti-dilution” hedges. Convertible bonds, with their embedded conversion rights, can lead to significant equity dilution if the company’s stock price surges, diluting existing shareholders. The capped call acts as a “dilution insurance,” allowing the company to offset potential equity dilution by purchasing call options that profit if the stock rises within a certain range. This signals management’s confidence in the company’s long-term valuation and a strong desire to protect current shareholders’ interests.

This complex combination indicates that Bitdeer’s financial strategy has moved beyond early-stage crypto industry chaos into a level of capital sophistication comparable to top Nasdaq tech firms.

After accounting for debt restructuring and option hedging costs, the remaining funds—along with the cash from Bitcoin liquidation—reveal Bitdeer’s true ambition: to shed the “pure Bitcoin miner” label and fully pivot into high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) cloud services.

In the wave of generative AI breakthroughs, the global computing market faces unprecedented supply-demand imbalances. Training and inference of large AI models require massive compute clusters, which in turn demand enormous energy infrastructure (power and cooling data centers).

Bitcoin miners have a unique arbitrage advantage in this macro context. Essentially energy arbitrageurs, they control some of the world’s cheapest, largest-scale electricity resources and highly scalable data center real estate. Bitdeer explicitly states that the new funds will be used to:

Expand HPC and AI cloud operations.

Develop proprietary ASIC mining hardware (to vertically integrate hardware supply chains and reduce Capex).

Build high-standard data centers.

Transform or upgrade low-margin Bitcoin infrastructure into high-margin, stable cash flow AI data centers—this is the core narrative of major miners’ strategic shift. AI clients typically sign long-term, fixed-rate service contracts (like PPAs), contrasting sharply with Bitcoin mining’s daily revenue volatility driven by Hashprice fluctuations.

By liquidating Bitcoin holdings and issuing convertible bonds, Bitdeer is effectively investing in a more predictable future (AI infrastructure) with the proceeds from its less efficient past (hodling Bitcoin).

Despite leading the global hash rate at 63.2 EH/s, Bitdeer has set a record of “zero coin holdings.” This phenomenon marks a fundamental divergence in the business models of publicly listed miners worldwide.

Under this logic, having the largest hash rate does not mean hoarding the most coins but rather possessing the biggest cash flow engine and energy load capacity. When profits fall below a certain threshold, the rational choice is to reallocate capital into higher-yield, red-hot sectors like AI—aligning with quantitative and capital allocation principles.

In this challenging post-halving cycle of 2026, blindly hoarding Bitcoin is no longer a universal remedy. For investors in financial markets, this is no longer just a “mining” story but a hard-core narrative about energy, hash rate management, and Wall Street capital efficiency.