Bitcoin miners are being asked whether their sites should also run AI. At Mining Disrupt Fort Lauderdale 2025, Bitmain's answer was to sell them hardware that can do either, and cooling that fits a data center.
Yifan Hu, Bitmain's Sales Director for North America, gave the company's keynote at Mining Disrupt Fort Lauderdale, held March 25–27, 2025. Bitcoin traded at $87,393 that week; on October 11, 2026 it was $82,754. Intelligence Disrupt 2027, March 22 to 24 in Irving, Texas, picks up the same question of mining sites and AI.
Liquid cooling for mining and AI
Hu opened with Bitmain's history, which he said is intertwined with Bitcoin's own, from a humble beginning in 2013. The secret, he said, is simple: most of the company is engineers and product people. Then he turned to cooling. Liquid cooling, he said, is where the industry is moving, and not just mining: for HPC and AI too, it is the most efficient and sustainable way to remove heat.
He pointed to the arc from the S1 to the S21 XP across air, hydro and immersion, and to the XP series, Bitmain's flagship line, launched at the company's WDMS event the year before. Bitmain built three lines of products, he said, because its customers' sites are scattered around the world: some with water and some without, some hot all year and some cool, and it wanted a solution for each.
we were always striving to push the limits on what is possible
Yifan Hu · 1:13
A 90-day change window
The selling point Hu returned to most was flexibility. Customers buying Bitmain's hydro, immersion or air machines can swap the cooling solution after they order, with notice. That matters for operators who have to commit to hardware before a site is fully studied: they lock in a delivery slot first, and the design of the site can still change. Hu called the jump in efficiency and hashrate from the previous generation of the XP hydro line astonishing, and said he saw no parallel in the market.
Hu's example: a greenfield site plans for hydro cooling, then finds in due diligence that hydro is not the right fit. Because the customer placed the order to secure timely delivery, Bitmain lets it change the cooling solution.
You can always request to change with 90 days prior notice.
Yifan Hu · 4:02
Dry towers and heat recovery
Hu walked through Bitmain's liquid options. Hydro units suit sites with water. For sites without it, the dry tower is a closed-loop system, designed for average yearly temperatures of at most 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 °C). For places with intense heat, the dry-wet tower is the better fit, and Bitmain said it had deployed these in the US, Africa and Latin America.
The cooling hardware comes in containers. The HW5 is a 40-foot hydro container of about 1.2 megawatts. For sites without water there is the dry-tower HK3 in a 20-foot box, and the newly released HD5, a 40-foot container with the cooling towers stacked on top: 1.5 megawatts and 380 miners per container, aimed at operators short on space.
He also introduced Endra, a heat-recovery solution for anyone who would otherwise pay to heat something: a house, a pool, a sauna. He had even heard, he said, of people at the show using mining heat to pasteurize beer.
dry tower is usually thought to be or like it was conceived to be used on average yearly temperatures of maximum 95 Fahrenheit
Yifan Hu · 6:25
Miners built to fit a data center
Bitmain's immersion miners, Hu said, had the lowest joules per terahash on the market: 13.5 in normal mode and 15 in high-energy mode, Bitmain's name for overclocking.
Hu was open about the uncertainty. Many miners were weighing a mix of HPC and Bitcoin mining, and no one knew yet how AI would be monetized. So Bitmain built U-shaped, liquid-cooled miners that are compatible with standard data center infrastructure and need nothing special, to give miners the versatility to keep mining while expanding their business.
We think the market claimed for immersion products and we released them honestly the lowest jewels per terahash in the market
Yifan Hu · 10:33
let's give like miners the versatility to keep mining while expanding their business portfolio.
Yifan Hu · 11:33
A Q4 batch and a farm-building guide
Hu also spoke about what mining does beyond the site. Ethiopia, he said, is an example of a country that does not get much attention from foreign investors, where the mining industry, speaking for the industry and not only Bitmain, has helped create jobs, stabilize the grid, foster renewable energy and bring investment.
He closed with a new sales batch for Q4 delivery at a special price, with the same option to exchange miners on a one-hashrate-for-one basis with two months' notice. Bitmain had also just published a free mining farm construction guide on its website, explaining step by step how to build a hydro mining farm, and offered to arrange visits to live hydro farms. Anyone considering hydro, he said, could see a live farm in operation rather than learn it from manuals.
For readers of this magazine, the talk lands on a familiar question: whether a site built for Bitcoin mining can also host AI. Bitmain's bet in March 2025 was not to pick one, but to sell miners hardware and cooling that keep both options open, while admitting that no one yet knew how AI would pay.
if you have a heat recovery need and you're going to spend some money on heating
Yifan Hu · 12:15