US-based Core Scientific aims to sell almost all of its Bitcoin reserves by 2026. While the company closed 2025 with a balance of approximately 2,537 BTC, it disposed of 1,900 BTC in January alone and earned $175 million in revenue from this sale. Core Scientific’s management plans to use the cash to develop a portfolio of new AI data centers with a capacity of 1.5 gigawatts and targets contracted revenues of $10 billion.
Separation in Corporate Sales Strategies
Core Scientific stands out as a miner that quickly turns its assets into cash and turns to new business lines, rather than keeping Bitcoin as a long-term investment tool. The company held 2,537 BTC at the end of 2025, but in January it sold 1,900 BTC, reducing its balance to approximately 630 BTC. Sales will continue in the first quarter of 2026 and the company aims to completely liquidate its Bitcoin reserves.
This approach is the exact opposite of the position of the Strategy firm run by Michael Saylor. While the strategy added another 3,015 BTC in the same period, Core Scientific is divesting its reserves. Both companies are among the prominent players in the institutional Bitcoin portfolio. While one is buying on every dip, the other is selling all its holdings for GPU clusters. The differentiation in corporate Bitcoin strategies draws attention in this period.
Radical Transformation in the Revenue Model
Core Scientific, whose revenue from mining decreased by 40 percent compared to a year ago, announced a loss of $ 0.42 per share in the last quarter of 2025. Both the block reward halving in Bitcoin and the rise in the global hash rate negatively affected profit margins. Additionally, the Bitcoin price slide below $126,000 increased operational pressure.
In this environment, the company decided to focus on a new artificial intelligence data center business line with a contractual revenue potential of $10 billion. High-density computing collaboration with CoreWeave requires transforming mining facilities into AI infrastructure. Thus, the company is moving away from the shrinking revenue area in Bitcoin mining and into the growing artificial intelligence market.
Core Scientific management informed that, “We consider our Bitcoin reserve as a by-product of mining, not the core activity of the company. Liquidating the reserves to fund the contracted demand of up to 10 billion dollars is not a difficult decision to explain.”
New Era in Miners: Turning from Bitcoin to AI
Core Scientific aims to reach 1.5 gigawatts of rentable energy capacity by 2028, and all of this capacity will be devoted to AI projects over time. This goal takes the company into an area where giants such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google compete. Other leading miners are exhibiting similar strategic orientations. For example, while Riot Platforms company is establishing new facilities in cooperation with AMD, MARA Holdings has started to use Bitcoin sales for artificial intelligence investments.
Miners tend to allocate their energy assets to artificial intelligence centers and provide financing by liquidating Bitcoin reserves. However, the strategy implemented by each differs: Core Scientific quickly divests all its reserves, MARA plans to sell when necessary, and Riot uses equity issuance in their approach.
Latest Developments in Market Dynamics
In January 2026, Core Scientific’s sale of 1,900 BTC entered the market with an average of approximately $ 92,000 per coin. Although this amount was not the sole determinant on the market, it contributed to the general supply pressure created by corporate sales. In the same month, Bitcoin experienced the weakest period of the current series of declines, losing 10.1 percent in value. Although the impact of the sale of Core Scientific in this table cannot be measured clearly, it is periodically evaluated as part of the pressure on the supply side.
