Cango's Great BTC Unloading: $442M Later, AI Compute Gets the Spotlight

Cango Inc. sold 6,451 bitcoin across February and March 2026, applying the proceeds entirely to retire crypto-collateralized loans as the company transitions its mining infrastructure toward artificial intelligence (AI) compute services. Because nothing says "we're serious about AI" quite like liquidating your bitcoin stash to pay off the loan sharks.

Key Takeaways:

• Cango sold 6,451 BTC across February and March 2026, generating roughly $442 million to retire bitcoin-backed loans
• The sales cut Cango's outstanding BTC-collateralized debt to $30.6 million and reduced its hashrate to 37.01 EH/s by March 31
• Cango secured a $65 million insider equity investment and a $10 million convertible note from DL Holdings to fund its AI compute pivot

Cango Inc. executed the first sale on approximately Feb. 7-8, offloading 4,451 BTC on the open market for net proceeds of roughly $305 million, settled directly in USDT. The implied average sale price was $68,524 per coin. For those keeping score at home, that's roughly 44 hundred coins dumped onto the market while most degens were still arguing about whether $100K would ever happen. Cango announced the transaction Feb. 9, citing board approval and a review of market conditions. All proceeds from that February sale went toward partially repaying a bitcoin-backed loan. After the transaction closed, Cango held 3,313.4 BTC in treasury and had produced 454.83 BTC during the month. A neat little 13% monthly production, just in time for the big sell-off.

In March, Cango sold an additional 2,000 BTC to retire the remaining balance on outstanding crypto-secured debt. Secondary reports placed the average sale price in the $68,000 to $69,000 range, implying proceeds near $137 million. The company did not disclose an exact price in its April 8 operational update. Quiet indeed—nothing like letting the market wonder exactly how much you left on the table.

By March 31, Cango's bitcoin treasury stood at 1,025.69 BTC, down from an estimated 7,500-plus BTC before the February sale. The outstanding balance on bitcoin-backed loans fell to $30.6 million. That's what we call a cleanup—roughly 86% of their bitcoin treasury gone, converted into loan repayments and a one-way ticket to AI land.

On the mining side, the company reported total operational hashrate of 37.01 EH/s at month-end, comprising 27.98 EH/s of self-mining and 9.02 EH/s through hashrate leasing. That compares to a peak of roughly 50 EH/s the company reached in late 2025, a reduction that reflects Cango's deliberate pullback from scale in favor of margin. Translation: they stopped chasing hashrate numbers and started chasing actual profits—revolutionary stuff in this industry.

The average cash cost per bitcoin mined in March came in at $68,215.83, a 19.3% improvement from $84,552 in the fourth quarter of 2025. The company attributed the gain to decommissioning older equipment, deploying newer Bitmain S21 and S21XP mining rigs, shifting capacity to lower-cost power regions, and implementing revenue-sharing arrangements at select high-cost sites. In plain English: they kicked the old junk to the curb, slapped in some shiny new S21s, found cheaper electricity, and negotiated better deals at the expensive locations. Welcome to cost optimization 101.

To support the transition without relying solely on bitcoin sales, Cango closed a roughly $65 million equity investment from company leadership and insiders on March 31, settled in USDT. The company also secured a $10 million convertible note from DL Holdings and received an earlier equity infusion of approximately $10.5 million in February. Nothing like your own insiders betting $65M on the pivot—either they believe in the AI dream or they really, really didn't want to see the stock implode.

Cango entered bitcoin mining in November 2024, moving away from its original automotive financing and used-car export business. It scaled operations across more than 40 sites spanning North America, the Middle East, South America, and East Africa before pivoting toward modular, containerized GPU-based AI inference compute. The company is targeting small- and medium-sized enterprises with that infrastructure. So they went from car exports to mining 50 EH/s in about a year, and now they're going full AI. That's faster pivoting than a trading desk on arug pull.

For fiscal year 2025, Cango reported revenue of approximately $688 million and a net loss of roughly $453 million, which was tied to the mining buildout, price volatility, and transition expenses. $453M in losses on $688M in revenue—those are the kind of numbers that make accountants weep and investors ask uncomfortable questions.

In early April 2026, NYSE notified Cango that its stock had traded below $1 on a 30-day average closing price basis, triggering a continued-listing review. The company has a six-month cure period to bring the share price back into compliance. Nothing says "we're pivoting to AI" quite like a NYSE warning about your share price being change. They've got six months to rediscover the meaning of the number one.

The two bitcoin sales have materially reduced Cango's exposure to crypto-collateralized debt while freeing capital for AI deployment across its existing grid-connected sites. The company says it will keep mining but intends to prioritize per-site cash margins over total hashrate. Translation: they're not quitting mining entirely, they just stopped pretending hashrate matters more than profits. A novel concept, really.