Good morning everybody.
It’s Monday, August 31st, 2026.
Before we get into Bitcoin, I want to talk about something broader because I think it applies to crypto, investing, politics, business, parenting, physical fitness, and just about everything else.
Hold yourself to high standards.
The reason that matters here is that crypto is an industry built around competing narratives. If all you listen to are Bitcoin bulls telling you the dollar is about to collapse and everything is going onto a Bitcoin standard, eventually you’re going to believe some version of that. If all you listen to are bears telling you Bitcoin is a government conspiracy designed to destroy the financial system, eventually you’re going to believe some version of that instead.
Neither is a particularly good way to make decisions.
You have to understand the bull case and the bear case. You have to understand the technology, but you also have to understand how it can fail. You have to challenge your own assumptions instead of searching for people who reinforce them. And you have to be willing to change your mind when the information changes.
That’s the standard I try to apply here. It’s also why you’re listening to Daily Crypto News. This industry has already changed the world, and most people still don’t completely understand what is happening.
Bitcoin Failed at $80K Again
Bitcoin is back below $78,000 after another failed attempt to establish $80,000 as support.
We’ve talked about this level repeatedly.
Touching $80K isn’t enough anymore.
Bitcoin needs to get through $80K, begin closing closer to $83K, and then use $80K as the floor when sellers come back.
That hasn’t happened.
Instead, we’ve got several new headwinds. Renewed U.S.-Iran fighting has pushed oil higher. Bond yields are rising. The market is pricing in tighter monetary policy. And the winning streak for spot Bitcoin ETF flows finally ended.
Friday saw approximately $200 million in net outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, ending the recent run of consecutive inflow days.
That’s not catastrophic. ETF flows move in both directions.
But after ETF demand helped support Bitcoin during its run toward $80K, it’s something worth watching.
Right now, the first job is defending roughly $78K. Then we need another attack on $80K.
Warsh Looks More Serious About 2% Inflation
The bigger macro issue is Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.
The market interpreted his Jackson Hole comments as hawkish enough that the probability of a September rate increase moved to roughly 60% from around 40% a week earlier, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.
What caught my attention was Warsh’s emphasis on 2% inflation.
Jerome Powell became more flexible about how the Fed approached that target. Warsh sounds, at least from my interpretation of his comments, considerably more committed to actually getting inflation back to 2%.
If that’s his standard, then the consequences are straightforward.
Tighter monetary policy.
Potentially higher rates.
Less liquidity.
That’s not necessarily the environment Bitcoin wants.
My expectation is that we’re going to get additional rate increases. I think two more hikes by the end of the year are possible because inflation remains too high for the standard Warsh appears to be setting.
We’ll see.
But if I’m right about his philosophy, Bitcoin investors need to take it seriously rather than assuming the Fed is inevitably coming to rescue risk assets with cheaper money.
Bitcoin Miners Are Becoming AI Infrastructure Companies
Now we get to what I think is one of the biggest structural stories happening inside the Bitcoin mining industry.
Bitcoin miners spent years acquiring something AI companies desperately need:
Power.
But that’s only the beginning.
They have grid connections.
Land.
Substations.
Cooling systems.
Fiber.
Data-center facilities.
And in some cases, access to the computing infrastructure needed to expand into high-performance computing and AI.
That puts established Bitcoin miners in an unusually good position.
Instead of starting from scratch and waiting years to build data centers and negotiate grid access, some miners can take infrastructure they already control and redirect portions of it toward AI.
And the economics are starting to show why they’re doing it.
IREN’s AI cloud revenue reached approximately $70.5 million in the latest quarter, increasing roughly 110% and surpassing its Bitcoin mining revenue, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.
The company also says approximately $4 billion in annualized AI cloud revenue has already been contracted for planned capacity.
That’s not a side business anymore.
AI Regulation Could Become Bitcoin Mining Regulation
Here’s the part I think deserves considerably more attention.
The AI data-center boom is creating an infrastructure policy problem.
These facilities require enormous amounts of electricity.
So do Bitcoin mines.
Grid operators, utilities and governments increasingly have to decide who gets connected, where new transmission gets built, how much electricity these facilities can consume, how water gets allocated, and what permits are required.
That means Bitcoin mining economics can increasingly be affected by rules ostensibly written for the AI boom.
Think about that.
Bitcoin mining used to operate largely in the background. AI data centers now have enormous political and regulatory attention.
But when the same companies, power infrastructure and data centers are serving both industries, separating them becomes difficult.
AI infrastructure policy can indirectly become Bitcoin infrastructure policy.
That’s not necessarily good or bad.
It’s simply something Bitcoin investors need to understand.
Riot Is Increasingly an AI Company With Bitcoin Attached
Look at what is happening with Riot Platforms.
According to the Bernstein analysis discussed in today’s show, approximately 84% of Riot’s target enterprise value now comes from AI, compared with roughly 11% from Bitcoin mining and another 5% associated with its Bitcoin holdings.
That follows Riot’s reported $9.1 billion in data-center agreements with frontier AI labs.
Think about how dramatic that is.
We’re talking about a company historically identified as a Bitcoin miner being valued predominantly around AI infrastructure.
CleanSpark and MARA are also beginning to separate based on their ability to execute on AI.
CleanSpark has reportedly secured approximately $6.6 billion in AI leases, while MARA has yet to announce a comparable commercial AI agreement. Bernstein consequently maintained a more favorable rating on CleanSpark than MARA in the analysis discussed today.
Bitcoin mining isn’t disappearing.
But investors are beginning to ask whether the electricity and infrastructure controlled by these companies might be worth more serving AI customers than mining Bitcoin.
Power Is the Constraint
One company has taken that argument even further.
The company discussed in today’s show has decommissioned its U.S. Bitcoin mining operations as it converts those locations toward AI and high-performance computing. It also sold 1,085 Bitcoin for approximately $75 million, while retaining 1,861 Bitcoin on its balance sheet.
The CEO’s thesis was basically:
Power is the constraint. Everything else comes after it.
That’s a useful way to think about the entire AI infrastructure boom.
Everybody talks about chips.
But a chip sitting inside a box without enough electricity isn’t doing anything.
You need generation.
Transmission.
Grid connections.
Cooling.
Storage.
Land.
Fiber.
Data centers.
That’s the vertical.
The AI Infrastructure Trade Is Getting Much Bigger
We talked about this last week with SanDisk.
A year ago, most people thought of SanDisk as the company making flash drives, memory cards and storage.
Then AI infrastructure demand changed how investors looked at the business.
The same thing is now happening across industries that don’t immediately scream “AI.”
SLB announced an approximately $3.4 billion cash acquisition of cooling-equipment manufacturer Kelvion, while assuming roughly another $700 million in debt, according to the figures discussed in today’s show.
Why does an oil-services giant care about cooling equipment?
Data centers.
This is exactly why I keep talking about understanding the vertical.
AI isn’t Nvidia.
It’s Nvidia plus memory plus storage plus cooling plus electricity plus transmission plus data centers plus land plus fiber plus everything else required to make the system operate.
And Bitcoin miners happen to own several important pieces of that stack already.
But What Happens if the AI Trade Breaks?
This is where I want to apply the standard I talked about at the beginning.
Don’t just listen to the bull case.
There are yellow flags.
If every company suddenly becomes an “AI infrastructure company” because investors will pay a premium for anything associated with AI, we need to start asking how much of these valuations depend on AI demand continuing at its current pace.
Bitcoin miners actually have an interesting hedge.
If AI demand collapses tomorrow, they still have infrastructure that can theoretically return to Bitcoin mining.
Whether that makes every individual miner a profitable business is a different question, but the infrastructure itself still has another use.
Some companies being built almost entirely around the AI boom may not have that luxury.
And the concentration of stock-market value around AI raises a much larger economic question.
If we’re building an enormous amount of retirement wealth and market capitalization around the assumption that this spending continues, a severe AI correction doesn’t remain isolated to technology investors.
It hits index funds.
It hits 401(k)s.
It hits retirement accounts.
It hits household wealth.
I’m not saying that’s going to happen.
I’m saying there are enough yellow flags that we should be paying attention instead of pretending there’s only one possible outcome.
The doom-and-gloom stuff gets clicks.
So does the “AI changes everything and number goes up forever” stuff.
I don’t want either bubble.
I want the information from both sides.
Crypto Prices
Bitcoin is sitting at approximately $77,900, down around 1% over the past 24 hours.
Ethereum is around $2,474, down roughly 0.8%.
BNB is trading around $686, down approximately 1.6%.
XRP is around $1.36, down roughly 2.3%.
Solana is approximately $102, down around 3.3%.
TRON is trading around $0.334, down roughly 2%.
Hyperliquid is approximately $81.23, down nearly 3%.
And Zcash has suddenly moved into the top ten at approximately $823, despite being down around 2.5% on the day.
Dogecoin has fallen to number 11 at roughly $0.082, down around 3.3%.
Total Crypto Market Cap: approximately $2.62 trillion.
Fear & Greed Index: 74, Greed.
My Take
Bitcoin failing at $80K again isn’t the most interesting story to me today.
The bigger story is that Bitcoin infrastructure and AI infrastructure are becoming intertwined.
Bitcoin miners spent years accumulating something that suddenly became incredibly valuable to another industry: access to enormous amounts of electricity and the infrastructure required to use it.
That’s creating opportunities for companies like IREN, Riot and CleanSpark.
It’s also creating new risks.
The regulations written because politicians and utilities are worried about AI data centers could affect Bitcoin mining. The valuations being attached to miners could increasingly depend on their AI businesses rather than their Bitcoin businesses. And if the AI boom eventually turns into an AI bust, we’re going to find out very quickly which companies built sustainable infrastructure and which ones simply attached “AI” to their investor presentation.
That’s why I started today’s show talking about standards.
Don’t become an AI bull because everybody else is bullish.
Don’t become a Bitcoin bear because Bitcoin failed at $80K.
Take in the information.
Understand the bull case.
Understand the bear case.
Then make your own decision.