Publicly traded Bitcoin mining company Cango (NYSE: CANG) has joined the list of major players using their BTC holdings to manage debt and focus on AI investments.
On Wednesday, the company announced that it had sold BTC in March 2000, calling it a “strategic de-leveraging” to end its BTC-backed loans.
The company added that it has raised $75 million and that some of the proceeds from the “strategic de-leveraging” will help fuel its diversification.
This deleveraging, combined with recent capital injections, strengthens Cango’s balance sheet to support its planned transition to energy and AI infrastructure.
Bitcoin hashrate drops as Cango and other miners move to AI
Now the company owns 1,025.69 BTC. Interestingly, Cango said its aggressive lean activities helped reduce BTC production costs by 19% in the first quarter. For perspective, in Q4 2025, the production cost for 1 unit of BTC was $84.5K. By March 2026, this had fallen to $68.2K.
While this is a big improvement, the miner would still be in dire straits if the price of BTC falls below $68,000. In such a scenario, it could be forced to liquidate more of its BTC holdings to stay afloat.
Against this backdrop, the growing trend of public miners rushing into AI infrastructure projects to maximize their computing power for additional revenue makes sense.
Cango now joins the growing list of public miners focusing on AI, including MARABit Digital, Core Scientific, IREN, Bit farmsTerraWulf and Cipher Mining.
While some spend some of their BTC energy and computing power on AI, BTCs global hashrate has also decreased. In fact oneAccording to Glassnode, the global hashrate fell from a record high of 1,115 Zetahash/s to 950 Exahashes/s – a 17.4% drop in BTC’s total computing power.
Dropping hashrate is an opportunity and a risk at the same time. The decreasing hashrate and AI pivots imply that the overall Bitcoin network security has been lowered and could expose it to attack if the trend continues.
On the other hand, it offers small and medium miners a rare opportunity to step into the void left by public miners diversifying into AI. As the hashrate drops, so do network issues and overall production costs, allowing the remaining BTC miners to benefit higher margins.
Final summary
- Cango dumped 2,000 BTC to cover its debt and doubled down on its AI shift after raising another $75 million.
- Public miners’ continued shift to AI has partially caused the 17% drop in the global Bitcoin hashrate.