June proved to be a challenging month for leading public miners. CleanSpark, BitFuFu, and Canaan — three notable players in the Bitcoin mining market — recorded a decline in production volumes, despite network difficulty dropping to a low last seen in early 2026. This is a paradoxical situation: easier mining should have spurred growth, but operational issues prevailed.
CleanSpark, one of the largest miners in the U.S., mined 614 BTC compared to 671 BTC in May. The company attributes the 8.5% decline to a drop in average operational hashrate from 46 EH/s to 43 EH/s. Nevertheless, CleanSpark's balance sheet at the end of June held an impressive 13,924 BTC. BitFuFu showed an even sharper decline — from 177 BTC to 125 BTC, a 29% decrease. Here, the reason lies in reduced leased capacity: the total hashrate fell from 19.5 EH/s to 15 EH/s. However, the company is actively expanding its own fleet, deploying 1,200 additional S21 XP miners in June and planning to connect another 2,000 devices in July. Canaan, in turn, mined only 64 BTC compared to 90 BTC the previous month. The decline is linked to scheduled power grid maintenance at one of its sites, although its joint venture in Texas has already recovered from the May wildfires. Canaan's balance sheet grew by 49 BTC, ending the month with a record 1,915 BTC and 3,952 ETH.
The stock market reaction was mixed. CleanSpark shares rose 5% to $13, BitFuFu gained 7% to $1.42, while Canaan shares lost 1.5%, falling to $0.2. Investors are clearly assessing not so much current mining output as long-term prospects.
CleanSpark Changes Course: $6.6 Billion Contract
Against this backdrop, CleanSpark made a major announcement. On July 14, the company signed a 20-year lease agreement for a data center campus in Sandersville, Georgia, with an unnamed investment-grade technology firm. The contract is valued at $6.6 billion. The tenant will deploy infrastructure with a capacity of 175 MW, with the facility's launch scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2027. Two five-year renewal options could increase the total deal value to $11.6 billion. CleanSpark CEO Matt Schultz emphasized that this marks a transition from pure Bitcoin mining to a diversified digital infrastructure model. Concurrently, the parties agreed to exclusive negotiations over CleanSpark's entire Texas portfolio, which includes two sites with potential capacity of up to 885 MW. The company expects the contract to generate approximately $330 million in net operating income annually at nearly 100% margins. Recall that CleanSpark began its pivot toward AI infrastructure as early as fall 2025, and MARA Holdings recently acquired a Texas site for $600 million for similar purposes.
My comment: The decline in mining output for these three companies is not just a statistical anomaly but a signal of structural changes in the sector. By signing a multi-billion dollar data center contract, CleanSpark is effectively acknowledging that the future of mining lies not in the hashrate race, but in hybrid models where energy and infrastructure serve both cryptocurrency mining and AI. This is a trend we will observe more and more frequently.