Riot Platforms Pays Off $200 Million Coinbase Loan Early, Frees 5,821 Bitcoin While Data-Center Bet Grows

Riot Platforms cleared $200 million in debt off its books on September 21, according to a September 25 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Bitcoin miner voluntarily repaid all outstanding principal and interest on its Coinbase Credit facility, ending the arrangement roughly seven months ahead of its amended April 20, 2027 maturity date. No early termination fees or penalties were charged.

The payoff released the collateral backing the loan: Bitcoin, USDC, and cash held in custody at Coinbase Custody Trust Company. As of June 30, Riot had pledged 5,821 BTC against the facility, worth approximately $340.7 million at that time, according to the filing. That represented about 51% of Riot's total holdings of 11,380 BTC.

How the Loan Grew

Riot originally borrowed $100 million from Coinbase Credit in April 2025. One month later, in May 2025, the company doubled it to $200 million and drew the full amount. In April 2026, the two sides amended the deal to lock in a fixed 6.15% annual interest rate in place of a floating rate. Coinbase's commitment to extend further credit under the facility was terminated simultaneously with the repayment.

With the collateral released, Riot's full 11,380 BTC treasury is now unencumbered. The company reported liquidity exceeding $1.2 billion as of the second quarter of 2026, giving it room to hold the coins, redeploy them in future financing, or sell portions to fund capital spending.

The Pivot to Data Centers

The debt payoff lands as Riot pushes deeper into AI infrastructure leasing at its Rockdale, Texas campus. The company has signed a 50 MW deal with AMD and, in August, a 191 MW, 20-year lease with what it has described only as a "leading frontier AI" developer. Riot and several outlets covering the filing put the projected revenue from that lease at $9.1 billion over its term; Bloomberg, cited by TradingView, separately reported the tenant is Anthropic and valued the deal at about $9 billion, citing people familiar with the matter. Riot has not officially confirmed the tenant's identity.

The scale of that shift shows up in the numbers. Cointelegraph reported in May that Riot posted $167.2 million in first-quarter 2026 revenue, with its newly launched data-center business contributing $33.2 million of that total. Combined, Riot's data-center agreements are projected to generate roughly $9.1 billion in revenue over their lifespans, a figure that dwarfs the company's current mining-driven revenue base.

A Broader Fight Over Data Centers

Riot's expansion is happening against the backdrop of a national argument over data centers themselves, one that reached the U.S. Senate this weekend. Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) told Breitbart News's Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday that polling on AI and data centers runs roughly 80-20 in favor in China, and roughly the reverse in the United States.

"The reason it's so polarized in the United States is in part because China is leading a campaign along with Russia to turn people against AI and data centers here," McCormick said, adding that "these big tech firms did a bad job early on in rolling out these data centers." He said losing the AI race to China would carry "a military advantage, an economic advantage," and let Beijing "set the rules for the world." He floated a "FINRA-like" industry-led oversight model for AI as a response.

McCormick pointed to two specific findings to back the foreign-influence claim. X's safety team disclosed in August that it had identified a suspected Chinese bot farm of roughly 200,000 accounts, about 200 of which it said were posting to "manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy." That followed a June OpenAI report describing a PRC-linked campaign it dubbed "Data Center Bandwagon," which it said used ChatGPT to generate posts claiming data centers were driving up electricity prices.

"The CCP will leverage every tool, including American AI and American social media platforms, to divide and weaken us," Cale Brown, chair of Polaris National Security, told Breitbart News, noting China bans the same social platforms domestically.

The Local Concerns Are Real, Regardless

A reasonable objection to McCormick's framing is that opposition to data centers in the U.S. doesn't need a foreign hand behind it. Communities near proposed sites have raised concrete, homegrown complaints: rising local electricity rates, strain on water supplies used for cooling, and land or tax disputes with developers who don't always hire local labor. Those are the same concerns McCormick himself acknowledged tech companies mishandled early on.

McCormick's own response to that tension was to argue for local control rather than dismissal of the concerns. He said no senator should dictate where data centers get built, pointing to agreements in Bloomsburg and Homer City, Pennsylvania, that he said protect energy costs and water access while expanding local tax bases and hiring local workers. He also praised Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who broke with much of his party on AI and wrote last month that "China continues to fuel and benefit from our overreaction."

The sourced findings from X and OpenAI establish that PRC-linked accounts have attempted to amplify data-center criticism online. They do not establish what share of American opposition, if any, traces back to that activity versus organic local grievances over water, power costs, and land use. No independent measurement of that split appears in the available reporting.

For Riot, the immediate consequence is a cleaner balance sheet and full control of its Bitcoin treasury heading into a data-center buildout worth billions. Whether Anthropic is formally confirmed as the Rockdale tenant, and whether McCormick's proposed industry oversight model gains traction in Congress, remain open questions.