The Energy-Money Connection
CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju put forward an interesting perspective this week. He revived what some call the “Bitcoin equals energy” thesis, suggesting that proof-of-work might actually become the settlement layer for an economy increasingly driven by artificial intelligence. In this view, power—not narratives or government policies—becomes the real binding constraint.
Ju framed Bitcoin as something unique: a digital instrument that can price energy with precision. “Energy is money,” he wrote on social media. “Bitcoin precisely measures the value of energy.” He contrasted this with gold, which he says also embeds energy but can’t be measured accurately because it’s not digital. The conclusion? Bitcoin becomes the natural money for an AI-accelerated energy economy.
Shifting From Morality to Grid Economics
Ju’s comments appeared alongside a longer analysis from Hashed CEO Simon Kim, who wrote about “Monetizing Energy: Redefining Bitcoin’s Role in the AI Era.” Kim’s core argument is that the conversation has fundamentally changed. We’re moving away from moral debates about energy waste and toward practical discussions about grid economics and industrial pragmatism.
“The oldest criticism of Bitcoin has always been about energy,” Kim noted. Those arguments about wasting electricity or destroying the environment have been repeated for over a decade. But by 2026, he suggests, this debate no longer lives in the realm of moral condemnation. It’s become a question of infrastructure and economics.
Kim points to capital flows as evidence. He highlighted Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala allocating $437 million to BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF in late 2024. Then came a partnership with Oman’s sovereign wealth fund to back Crusoe Energy and launch the Middle East’s first flare-gas mining operation. In October 2025, Mubadala co-led Crusoe’s Series E with a $1.375 billion investment, pushing the company’s valuation above $10 billion. Interestingly, Crusoe then said it would divest its Bitcoin mining division to focus fully on AI infrastructure.
Miners as Infrastructure Builders
Kim’s thesis suggests miners have already done the hard work that AI now needs. They’ve secured power agreements, mastered high-density thermal management, and built operational expertise around flexible load management. He quoted Elon Musk from a November 2025 podcast: “Energy is the true currency. This is why I say Bitcoin is based on energy. You can’t just pass a law and suddenly have a lot of energy.”
A recurring theme in Kim’s analysis is that electricity has constraints—locality, immediacy, transmission losses—that make flexibility economically valuable. He cited examples like Sichuan hydropower curtailment exceeding 20 billion kWh by 2020. Miners became buyers of last resort for energy that couldn’t be stored or sold elsewhere.
Globally, Kim claims curtailed renewable energy exceeds 200TWh annually, representing more than $20 billion in economic losses. Bitcoin mining offers an instant monetization path for this surplus generation.
The Texas Example and Environmental Shifts
In Texas, Kim pointed to ERCOT’s classification of mining as a controllable load resource. During the 2022 winter storm, Riot Blockchain cut power usage by 98–99%. During an August 2023 heatwave, the company received $31.7 million in power credits—more than it would have earned mining that month. The framing shifts from “miners versus data centers” to “premium uptime workloads versus interruptible demand that stabilizes the grid.”
The environmental critique is also changing, Kim argues. He claims more than half of mining now comes from sustainable sources, exceeding 52%, while coal dependence fell from 36% to under 9%. On methane, he describes flare-gas mining as an emissions arbitrage: methane has about 80 times the greenhouse effect of CO2. Flaring combusts 93% with 7% escaping, while using gas for mining combusts over 99%, cutting CO2-equivalent emissions by over 60% versus flaring.
The forward implication of Ju’s framing is that if AI accelerates the premium on reliable power and buildout speed, Bitcoin’s value proposition may increasingly be argued in the language of energy markets: measuring, monetizing, and transporting scarcity.
Kim’s closing challenge was explicit: shift the question from consumption totals to system outcomes. The next phase of debate, he suggests, will center on where miners sit in the stack of AI-era infrastructure, not whether they should exist at all.
“AI operates where continuous uptime is essential; Bitcoin operates where flexibility has value,” Kim wrote. “Governments can print money, but they cannot print energy. Bitcoin’s proof-of-work is the mechanism that brings this physical reality into the digital economy.”
At the time of reporting, Bitcoin traded around $86,779. The conversation continues to evolve, perhaps faster than many expected.
