Hash Rate to Hot Take: Miners Discover Their Power Cords Plug Into AI Now

Nvidia is preparing a $20 billion bond offering to fund the next phase of its AI expansion, a move Bloomberg reported on Monday that reinforces the multi-year infrastructure buildout Bitcoin miners are increasingly tapping into. The chipmaker is pursuing a multi-part deal whose longest-dated bonds are expected to offer considerably higher yields than comparable US Treasury securities, with proceeds directed toward AI-related investments and refinancing existing debt. Mining operators including HIVE Digital, Hut 8, CleanSpark and TeraWulf are repositioning their energy-intensive facilities and power infrastructure for high-performance computing and AI hosting as Bitcoin mining margins tighten.

The pivot comes as the tokenized real-world asset market continues to grow through the broader crypto downturn. The total value of onchain financial assets has surpassed $43 billion, a 37% increase over the past six months, according to Token Terminal. Tokenized funds make up nearly 80% of all onchain financial assets, with commodities and tokenized stocks gaining traction. Standard Chartered expects tokenization to help drive decentralized finance toward a $2.7 trillion market capitalization by 2030, while Citigroup projects tokenized RWAs could reach $5.5 trillion over the same period.

Ripple has invested an undisclosed amount in Flutterwave, one of Africa's fastest-growing remittance companies, in a deal that values the fintech startup at $3.3 billion. The transaction will bring Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin, Ripple Payments platform and XRP Ledger infrastructure to one of Africa's largest payment providers, which operates across 35 countries. Separately, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried failed in his attempt to overturn his fraud conviction this week, closing another chapter in the exchange's collapse.