Bitcoin Miners Own Something AI Developers Can't Build Fast Enough

Bitcoin (BTC) mining sites have become some of the scarcest permitted power capacity in the United States. With 151 data center restrictions still active, AI developers face years of waiting to plug in anywhere new.

CoinShares cited at least 225 data center moratoriums or restrictions in its second-quarter mining report. The clampdown turns already energized capacity into a scarce asset.

States Are Closing the Door on New Power

The restrictions span 30 states, according to ElectricChoice tracking cited in the CoinShares report. Maine banned new data center construction outright in April.

CoinShares calls New York the most significant development. It paused environmental permits for facilities of 50 megawatts (MW) or more on July 14. Governor Kathy Hochul’s first statewide permit freeze runs for a year.

Restrictions have also spread at the county level across Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and Indiana. More than a third of counties there have moved to limit development, according to the report.

Pennsylvania tightened review rules for large projects, while Texas halted new grid connections pending an audit.

New York exempted permits it had already deemed complete, and similar carve-outs are common. A finished approval is now worth something that a newcomer has no way to obtain.

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What Bitcoin Miners Own That Nobody Else Can Get

The queue behind those rules is the harder problem. The US interconnection queue holds roughly 2,600GW, about double the country’s installed capacity. 

Median waits from request to operation exceeded five years for projects completed in 2025, according to research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Texas shows the squeeze clearly. ERCOT’s own large-load queue data put data centers at 87% of 410 GW. In PJM, projects entering service in 2025 averaged more than seven years from request to operation.

“The practical consequence is that an energised site cannot be recreated within any commercially relevant timeframe, regardless of capital available,” CoinShares added.

Existing space has tightened alongside it. CBRE recorded primary market vacancy at a record 1.4% at the end of 2025, despite supply growing by 36%, with vacancy falling to 0.3% in Northern Virginia by the first quarter of 2026.

Against that backdrop, a $3.5 billion purchase of three leased Northern Virginia AI facilities set a benchmark near $27 million per MW. Listed miners with energized but unleased capacity, in contrast, trade below $3 million per MW in some cases.

The two numbers are not directly comparable. One reflects facilities with leases in place, while the other reflects how the market values capacity that has none.

Conversion is not free. Retrofitting mining infrastructure to AI-grade costs an estimated $8 million to $15 million per MW, compared with $700,000 to $1 million to build it for mining.

“The direction of travel is clear: regulation and grid congestion have inverted the historic discount applied to mining sites, converting what was once viewed as stranded, low grade infrastructure into some of the scarcest permitted power capacity in the US,” the report mentioned.

Meanwhile, Washington has pushed back on the restrictions. President Donald Trump warned that towns that reject the facilities will end up backwards and poor, while Republicans fear a midterm backlash over the buildout.

Operators who can fund conversion and lock in tenants, therefore, stand to capture most of that premium. Grid access is the entry requirement, not the whole business.

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