#Gate广场五月交易分享 The Truth About the Crowded Venue of 40k People: Bitcoin Is Still Frenzied, But Money Has Moved to AI

By the end of April 2026, the Venetian Convention Center in Las Vegas was still bustling with activity. On stage was a familiar, almost template-like “faith feast.” Michael Saylor loudly declared that Bitcoin should be pushed to 10 million dollars;
Arthur Hayes set a year-end target of $125k;
Eric Trump directly called out a $1 million target.
Regulators rarely take the stage—
Paul Atkins and Mike Selig appeared together, and White House advisor Patrick Witt even preemptively signaled a policy move to “strategic Bitcoin reserves.” Everything seemed to tell you:
Bitcoin has never been more “mainstream.” But as soon as you step outside the main conference hall into the exhibition halls, you immediately realize—the story has changed.
1. The faith remains, but the buyers are gone
The official says 40,000 people attended this year. The numbers are fine, the atmosphere is fine. But the structure has changed.
Exhibitors’ feedback is remarkably consistent:
“More people, but no clients.”
Most of the people standing at booths are not buyers, but spectators;
not signing deals, but learning.
Compared to the “bull market expo” of 2025, the visible change this year is: effective conversion of foot traffic has declined.
The attendance at regular forums has sharply decreased, the number of exhibitors has dropped, and the business atmosphere has cooled significantly. In one sentence: last year was “clients looking for mining machines,” this year is “mining machines looking for clients.”
A more subtle signal is hidden in the sponsor list.
Traditional mining brands are still there, but the new keywords are now: AI, data centers, computing infrastructure. Money hasn’t disappeared; it’s just shifted narratives.
2. The real protagonists at the booths: not mining machines, but “electricity”
If in the past Bitcoin conferences focused on “hashrate,”
this year, the competition is actually over something else: who can control more electricity.
Mining hardware manufacturers are still present—
Bitmain continues to showcase new-generation equipment;
Bitdeer directly writes “Bitcoin Mining & AI Cloud” on their display boards.
Mining companies are also there, but their messaging has completely changed—
CleanSpark no longer emphasizes coin production but “electricity optimization”; even infrastructure providers no longer mention “mining farms,” but instead: modular data centers.
From Intelliflex to Moonshot, everyone is doing the same thing: redefining mining farms as AI server rooms.
3. The true migration: from “mining coins” to “selling computing power” — this is not just a conceptual shift, but a thorough capital migration.
In the first quarter of 2026, a brutal reality confronted all mining companies: the cost of a single Bitcoin approached $80k, hashrate prices fell to historic lows, mining profits were completely squeezed out, and continuing to mine was only to maintain cash flow;
The real profit is on the other side.
So, large-scale shifts began: North American miners signed over $70 billion in AI computing contracts, data center leasing profits reached 2.5 times that of mining, AI business revenue is expected to hit 70% by year-end, and the most extreme example is Bitdeer—
completely emptied Bitcoin reserves and went all-in on AI.
And MARA Holdings is even more aggressive:
selling BTC, buying land, locking in power, building AI data centers.
The logic is very simple: Bitcoin determines the price, AI determines cash flow. And both share only one underlying asset: electricity. Whoever controls the power, controls the next round of hashrate pricing.
4. The problem in the U.S. has been solved by China’s supply chain
But the transition isn’t easy.
Traditional AI data center construction takes 3–5 years,
but the market window is only a few months. At this point, an “outlier” begins to attract attention.
Modular data centers.
Represented by Fourier in China, they offer a completely different approach: deployment in a few months with standardized modules that can be directly reused for mining infrastructure. For capital holding GPUs but lacking server rooms, this isn’t just optimization—it’s a lifeline.
One sentence cuts to the core: AI is racing against time, not technology.
5. Those who stay are the true miners
If the story only ends here, the conclusion would be quite bleak: Bitcoin is being “bled dry” by AI. But reality is more complex. In the corner of the expo, you can still see another group—those who are precisely calculating electricity prices, pool fees, machine efficiency;
they compare energy costs across different regions;
they seek overlooked mining resources. Players like BitFuFu are not all-in on AI. They choose: refined operations to improve efficiency, control costs, and wait for a market cycle reversal. Their judgment is: only when speculative capital leaves does Bitcoin begin to truly price itself.
And on the other side of the exhibition hall, American families with children visit the Bitcoin exhibit, kids gather around mining machines and Lightning Network demo devices, asking curious questions. This scene is actually more important than any price forecast. Faith hasn’t disappeared; it’s just temporarily unprofitable.
Bitcoin 2026 isn’t as hot on the surface, nor as cold as it seems. The only real change happening is: hashrate is being re-priced. In the short term, AI is swallowing the mining industry; in the long term, Bitcoin is detaching from speculation.
After this migration, two types of people will determine the future:
One, those who control electricity, and
another, those who still believe in Bitcoin.
As for who will win? Maybe the answer has long been written in the two spaces of this conference—faith on stage, business off stage.