Bitcoin Miner Keel Sells All Its Bitcoin for $192M to Build AI Data Centers

Keel (formerly Bitfarms) sold its entire 2,520 bitcoin stash for $192M and is pivoting from mining to AI infrastructure.

A company that once stored bitcoin as a long-term investment has just sold all of it. Keel Infrastructure (formerly a bitcoin miner called Bitfarms) sold its entire bitcoin holdings for $192 million. Now it's betting its future on artificial intelligence (AI) instead.

What exactly happened?

Keel sold off its whole "bitcoin treasury" — the stockpile of bitcoin it had been holding on its balance sheet (the company's financial record of what it owns and owes).

Sold 2,520 bitcoin in total for $192 million
This included 2,261 coins it already had, plus 259 it newly mined
Going forward, any bitcoin it mines will be sold the same day it's produced

By selling immediately, Keel avoids the risk of bitcoin's price rising or falling while it holds the coins. In plain terms: they no longer want to gamble on bitcoin's price.

Why the big change?

Keel is shifting from being a bitcoin miner to becoming an "AI landlord" — building data centers (large facilities full of powerful computers) and renting out that computing power to AI companies.

The numbers show a company in transition:

Revenue dropped to $28 million, down from $68 million a year ago
Adjusted EBITDA (a measure of profit from core operations) swung to negative $27 million, from a positive $19 million
But it still holds about $780 million in cash

The bigger trend

Keel isn't alone. Other former bitcoin miners like Riot Platforms and Hut 8 have also sold thousands of bitcoin to fund AI projects. Riot just signed a roughly $28 billion deal to lease space to AI company Anthropic. Mining power and land are suddenly more valuable for AI than for bitcoin.

The bottom line

Keel is building huge data center capacity across Pennsylvania, Washington State, and Québec. The big question is whether it can sign paying tenants before its cash runs out. For now, the $192 million bitcoin sale is the clearest sign the company has fully abandoned its old strategy of hoarding bitcoin.

This is an AI-generated summary. Read the original article at: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/keel-sells-entire-bitcoin-treasury-192m