The Iran war has pushed Brent crude roughly 30% above its pre-war level, the U.S. is signaling that AI data centers may get pushed off the public grid, and households across Europe and the U.
The Iran war has pushed Brent crude roughly 30% above its pre-war level, the U.S. is signaling that AI data centers may get pushed off the public grid, and households across Europe and the U.S. are facing another round of power bill hikes.
Inside that squeeze, Bitcoin miners are quietly coming out ahead on energy. Patrick Stich, COO of Bitkern Group, joined TheStreet Roundtable to explain why.
Bitkern was founded in Austria in 2017 and now runs more than 14 sites across four continents. Stich's argument is that the defining advantage of Bitcoin mining is its ability to shut down on demand, and that one feature is why miners are still getting cheap power while AI data centers hit rate hikes and political backlash.
The U.S. and Israeli-led war against Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026. After Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz on March 4, Brent crude surged past $120 a barrel, one of the largest monthly oil moves on record.
Prices have since pulled back about 20% from the March peak on ceasefire optimism, with Brent settling near $95 and WTI near $92 in early June, both still about 30% above pre-war levels. The shock fed straight into European industrial power markets that every heavy compute operator on the continent has to plan around.
Stich frames Bitkern's global footprint as the answer to that kind of shock.
"We started in Europe mining in 2017. Nowadays we are a global operation company and we have in Asia, Northern Europe, North America, South America and the small operation Africa. So we have a mix of everything." said Stich.
Bitkern PRO, the firm's product for professional investors deploying $50,000 or more in mining hardware, places the rigs in whichever jurisdiction fits the client's risk-return profile. As Stich put it, the cheapest power is worthless if a conflict can wipe out the fleet.
"You can get the cheapest electricity price, but if there is a war starting (there) and your miners are gone, then there is no revenue for you. So you need to mix the geopolitical stableness and the energy price." added Stich.
Miners are uniquely able to power down on short notice. Bitkern signs Power Purchase Agreements with energy providers that include the right to shut its machines off for up to 600 hours a year, freeing that capacity for homes and industry.
"We had huge storms in Iowa, Nebraska, where we shut down and our facilities were offline for one week. But that's the deal. People need to have light at home, they need to have heating, and we at the Bitcoin mining industry are stabilizing the grid.
That flexibility is what energy providers pay for, and it is something an AI data center cannot offer.
"A data center needs to be online. A Bitcoin mining facility we can shut down and that makes us unique, and so we get all the cheaper prices from the energy companies."
The contrast is becoming more important as AI scales. Data centers are expected to account for roughly 9% of U.S. electricity demand by 2030, adding grid stress and political attention.
Miners that pivot fully to AI hosting give up that shut-down flexibility in exchange for steadier revenue from contracts that require staying online. Stich's point is that the miners keeping the ability to curtail are the ones holding onto their cheap power.
