Welcome to the US Crypto News Morning Briefing—your essential rundown of the most important developments in crypto for the day ahead.

Grab a coffee to read how the Bitcoin mining sector is changing. Skyrocketing costs, collapsing fees, and the rise of AI are forcing miners to rethink their playbook, turning once-stable operations into a battleground for next-generation compute power.

Crypto News of the Day: AI Takes Over Bitcoin Mining Racks as Costs Explode and Profitability Craters

The CoinShares Bitcoin Mining Report Q4 2025 reported that the sector has hit its breaking point. Production costs have surged to all-time highs, hash price has collapsed, and artificial intelligence (AI) is now outbidding miners for their own infrastructure, triggering the most dramatic structural shift the sector has ever faced.

The industry entered Q2 2025 with a brutal new reality:

• The average cash cost to mine one BTC among public miners jumped to approximately $74,600,
• All-in costs soared to $137,800.
• Transaction fees, once a buffer for miner revenue, fell below 1% of block rewards in May and June, the weakest contribution since the 2024 halving.

Yet even as margins collapsed, the Bitcoin network continued to climb, smashing through 1 Zetta hash/s for the first time in August.

Public miners contributed only about 80 EH/s of year-to-date growth, meaning most of the expansion is now coming from private operators, sovereign miners, and well-capitalized energy players with vastly cheaper power.

The result: miners are being diluted by hashrate growth they are no longer driving.

AI Moves In — And It Pays 10–20× More Per Megawatt

A far bigger disruption is unfolding at the infrastructure level. Industrial-scale mining campuses, comprising 100MW to 1GW sites, share nearly identical power, cooling, and rack density requirements with modern AI datacenters.

That overlap has turned mining facilities into prime targets for hyperscalers.

Deals from Google–TeraWulf, Google–Cipher, and multi-site agreements with Fluidstack signal the same direction, that big-tech is moving into miner-built capacity at a premium.

The math explains why. Bitcoin mining yields roughly $1 million per megawatt, while AI compute generates $10 million to $20 million per megawatt.

No miner can ignore that spread.

Industry Splits: AI Megacampuses vs. Mobile, Ultra-Low-Cost Miners

The sector is now diverging into two clear models:

1. 1. Megascale miners → fully or partially converting to AI/HPC

These facilities can upgrade their electrical topology and uptime standards to meet enterprise requirements. They’re signing decade-long contracts and shifting from volatile block rewards to stable, capacity-based revenue.

2. Low-cost, mobile miners → shifting to stranded energy

Miners unable to compete with AI are moving off-grid: flare gas, remote hydro, and surplus renewables. Portable rigs are being deployed everywhere cheap energy exists, echoing mining’s early decentralized roots.

This migration marks a long-term reshaping of the industry, and not a temporary cycle.

According to a CoinShares report:

• Hashprice averaged approximately $50 per PH/s/day throughout Q2, continuing its post-halving slide.
• With difficulty rising, fees stagnant, and Bitcoin trading mostly sideways, older ASIC fleets have been forced offline.

Analysts expect hashprice to remain range-bound between $37–55 per PH/s/day through 2028 unless BTC rallies far faster than hashrate growth.

A Structural Shift: AI Outbids Bitcoin

For the first time in Bitcoin’s history, miners are being priced out of their own infrastructure.

AI’s superior economics, hyperscaler deal flow, and the rising cost of industrial mining are pushing the industry into a permanent transformation.

The Bitcoin network remains strong, where hashrate is still climbing, but the business of mining is being rewritten fast.

This puts miners at an impasse, to either go big into AI, or go remote into stranded power.

Chart of the Day

Byte-Sized Alpha

Here’s a summary of more US crypto news to follow today:

• Yi He appointed Binance co-CEO amidst legal and regulatory challenges.
• Kevin Hassett as Trump’s Fed pick: How will his policy impact crypto in 2026?
• Ethereum Fusaka goes live today: Can it trigger a Pectra-like rally?
• Is Bitcoin ready to end its 5-week downtrend or face rejection at $95,000?
• Vanguard ‘degen effect’ fuels 10% surge for Bitcoin in explosive rebound.
• PENGU token jumps 30% on NHL Deal, but $108 million sell-off sparks fear.
• Binance marks 3 altcoins for delisting: Everything you need to know.
• V-shape bounce, rare Bitcoin signal, $13 billion Fed shock: What’s coming?

Crypto Equities Pre-Market Overview

Company	At the Close of December 2	Pre-Market Overview
Strategy (MSTR)	$181.33	$185.83 (+2.48%)
Coinbase (COIN)	$263.26	$269.39 (+2.33%)
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY)	$25.36	$25.90 (+2.13%)
MARA Holdings (MARA)	$11.91	$12.27 (+3.02%)
Riot Platforms (RIOT)	$15.22	$15.55 (+2.17%)
Core Scientific (CORZ)	$15.82	$16.03 (+1.33%)

The post Bitcoin Mining Hit Its Breaking Point — Now AI Is Taking Over Its Racks | US Crypto News appeared first on BeInCrypto.

PENGU rallied over 30% in early December 2025 following news of a major collaboration between Pudgy Penguins and the National Hockey League (NHL) for the 2026 Discover NHL Winter Classic.

Despite the price jump, on-chain data shows persistent transfers of PENGU from the project’s deployment address to centralized exchanges. This trend has sparked debate about the sustainability of PENGU’s recovery.

NHL Partnership Sparks PENGU Rally

PENGU, the Pudgy Penguins community token, experienced a notable surge during the first week of December. It has increased by almost 30% in the last 24 hours, trading at $0.01246 as of this writing.

This price increase aligned with Pudgy Penguins’ announcement of an NHL partnership lasting from December to January.

The collaboration launched at Art Week Miami, highlighted by activations, giveaways, and live appearances at NHL events.

Pudgy Penguins X @NHL

We will be collaborating with the NHL for the 2026 Discover NHL Winter Classic from December to January, starting this week at Art Week Miami.

From giveaways to Pengu meeting NHL fans and more, these activations will bring Pengu into the world of the NHL. pic.twitter.com/rcnIAT6fet

— Pudgy Penguins (@pudgypenguins) December 2, 2025

The partnership spans December through January, beginning with activations at Art Week Miami. The campaign, supported by an animated video of cartoon penguins skating across an ice rink, reflects the brand’s broader push into mainstream entertainment.

Once known primarily as an NFT collection, Pudgy Penguins has expanded into toys, physical events, and global licensing, now aiming to “own winter” through sports tie-ins.

The partnership reignited enthusiasm in the token. DEX trading volume for PENGU reached its monthly high in early December, as noted by Solscan. This surge reflected increased activity from traders responding to the partnership news.

Bullish sentiment received further support from whale accumulation. In late November, large investors acquired about $273,000 in PENGU, buying at nearly three times their average volume. Smart money inflows tracked $1.3 million from new addresses in early November.

At the same time, Bitso Exchange, the leading Latin American crypto exchange, announced a Q1 2026 launch of a perpetuals aggregator, featuring PENGU as a primary asset. This move targets the region’s $1.37 trillion remittance market.

$PENGU is there still hope ? after experiencing a pump of +35% blueprint of pengu with a potential increase of +359% to ATH$PENGU is the official community token of Pudgy Penguins, a web3 entertainment brand based on 8,888 unique NFTs launched on Ethereum in 2021 Acquired by… pic.twitter.com/kBIb0JPgtH

— Vespamatic.hl (@vespamatic96) December 3, 2025

However, with hype building around Pudgy Penguins’ new NHL partnership, traders now face a sharp contrast between bullish momentum and uneasy sell-pressure signals.

On-Chain Analysis: Selling Pressure Persists

Although price action turned positive, blockchain data identified ongoing token transfers. The PENGU deployment address has routinely moved about $3 million in tokens to centralized exchanges every few days.

On-chain analyst EmberCN reported that these transfers have continued, with the latest seen in early December.

“The most recent transfer was in the early hours of this morning,” they wrote.

Since mid-July, the address moved 3.881 billion PENGU tokens, worth $108 million, to centralized exchanges. This activity tracked directly with the decline in PENGU’s price, which fell from its $0.04 second peak to roughly $0.01.

Regular outflows from the project’s core wallet suggest ongoing selling or strategic distribution, challenging recent price gains.

Such token movements often prepare for sales or liquidity. In the PENGU ecosystem, however, the scale and sustained pace suggests ongoing distribution rather than routine liquidity management.

This dynamic creates tension between positive news, such as the NHL partnership, and continued selling from unlocked team or ecosystem tokens.

The post PENGU Token Jumps 30% on NHL Deal, But $108 Million Sell-Off Sparks Fear appeared first on BeInCrypto.