As fears grow that the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble is bursting, Wall Street trading is being kept alive by one fundamental issue: bitcoin. miners and data center developers still require significant amounts of power.
“M&A work is still happening because people still need power,” Joe Nardini, head of investment banking at B. Riley Securities, said in an interview with CoinDesk.
Nardini said energy demand from Bitcoin miners remains “huge,” but added that the appeal of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) is “even bigger,” with data centers and mining clients reporting sustained demand for GPU-ready facilities.
After Bitcoin halved rewards, miners faced severe margin compression even with prices near or above $100,000, and increasingly turned to hosting AI and high-performance computing (HPC) hardware in their existing data centers. This has helped drive big gains for some BTC mining stocks this year as AI hype has swept the market.
Read more: GPU Gold Rush: Why Bitcoin Miners Are Fueling the Expansion of AI
Earlier in 2025, growing concerns about artificial intelligence and high valuations erased significant market value from big tech names, including Nvidia (NVDA) and other AI beneficiaries, as investors took profits and reevaluated whether prices had outperformed fundamentals.
Shares of AI infrastructure specialist CoreWeave (CRWV) have also fallen and are now more than 50% below their June high.
Does this mean the AI trend is over? Nardini doesn’t think so, and he has a simple logic behind it and he asks the leaders: the customers Do you have a demand for the data center capacity they built? “Yes.” Do they have tenants? “Yes.” Are they good tenants? “Yes.” Do they benefit from good rates? “Yes.” Over several conversations, he said the message was consistent: “So the demand is still there. »
In fact, Hut 8 shares rose 20% last week after signing a 15-year, $7 billion lease with Fluidstack for 245 megawatts of computing capacity at its River Bend campus.
“Despite the recent sell-off, these companies have been well rewarded with higher valuation multiples and the ability to raise capital at attractive valuations and terms,” he said.
At the heart of the negotiation
This demand continues to support valuations and, increasingly, M&A negotiations, according to Nardini.
In competitive situations with high-quality power and viable locations, he said, dollars per megawatt (a financial measure for the value of each megawatt of electricity) can look “very attractive.” He said one of the processes involved an assessment of more than $400,000 per megawatt, with the potential to reach $450,000 per megawatt, depending on the outcome of negotiations. In fact, he’s already seen deals as high as $500,000 to $550,000 per megawatt.
However, demand for distressed or less desirable locations has not gone away and still attracts “low” offers, sometimes between $100,000 and $250,000 per megawatt, from buyers who like electricity but overlook the market or site quality.
So who are these buyers and sellers?
According to Nardini, buyers include hyperscalers (large technology companies that provide cloud computing infrastructure), AI companies and bitcoin miners, while the universe of sellers extends beyond crypto-native players.
He has witnessed negotiation processes involving old industrial facilities, such as a 160-year-old facility, where the main attraction is electricity, even if the market is not great. In another case, he said a private seller of a similar type of asset attracted interest from about 25 potential buyers looking for NDAs, including Bitcoin. miners, hyperscalers and AI companies.
This dynamic creates an unusual strategic range for asset owners. Sell to a hyperscaler or developer, or try becoming a developer yourself.
Nardini said he sees industrial companies with older, unused or nearly idle facilities being able to consider selling into the AI/HPC and Bitcoin ecosystem.
He cited another example involving a private client converting old office buildings into modular electric capacity, “building 30-megawatt units in the blink of an eye,” and now seeking additional funds to expand.
In at least one negotiation, he said, a tenant was even willing to prepay rent before completion, an illustration, he said, of the scarcity of desirable capacity.
No need to worry yet
Looking to 2026, Nardini said the setup would still favor risky assets if rates fall, calling it a potentially “risky” environment, which will be positive for deal-making in his sector.
He acknowledged that he’s “maybe speaking a little out of his book” but said the operational reality he’s hearing from executives keeps him constructive: The tenants are there, prices remain strong, and if a client doesn’t accept a site, “someone else will.”
His caveat to this positive sentiment is simple: If developers can’t lease what they’re building, or can’t get the price they need, now would be a time to worry. For now, he says he’s not hearing that. “The backbone of the business remains intact,” he said.
He concluded with a blunt assessment of the sentiment.
“The demand for power and AI HPC data center capacity continues unabated. Developers with data center capacity benefit from the demand of multiple creditworthy tenants at favorable rates, so the fundamental economics of the business remain intact.
Nardini said buyers are still hungry for energy and sellers are seeing good valuations for their assets. This further strengthens his conviction.
“The AI business is still active as of December 17, 2025,” he said.
Read more: Amazon enters AI arms race as crypto and risk asset fears rise
