June was a challenging month for leading public mining companies. CleanSpark, BitFuFu, and Canaan published operational reports that show a significant decline in Bitcoin mining volumes. This comes amid a drop in network difficulty to 2026 lows, which seemingly should have made life easier for miners, but the reality turned out to be different.
CleanSpark, one of the largest players, mined only 614 BTC compared to 671 BTC in May. The key reason was a decline in the average operational hashrate — from 46 EH/s to 43 EH/s. Despite the drop in production, the company continues to hold an impressive reserve on its balance sheet — 13,924 BTC. BitFuFu showed an even sharper decline: 125 BTC in June versus 177 BTC the previous month. The total computing power fell from 19.5 EH/s to 15 EH/s due to a reduction in leased capacity. However, the company is actively expanding its own fleet: 1,200 new S21 XP miners were deployed in June, and another 2,000 devices are expected to be connected in July. Canaan ended the month with a result of 64 BTC compared to 90 BTC in May, attributing the decline to planned power grid maintenance at one of its sites. At the same time, their joint venture in Texas recovered from the May wildfires. By the end of June, Canaan held a record number of coins on its balance sheet: 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, on the contrary, lost 1.5%, falling to $0.2. Investors are evidently assessing the prospects of each company individually, rather than the overall trend in the sector.
CleanSpark Bets on AI Infrastructure
On July 14, CleanSpark signed a landmark 20-year lease agreement for a data center campus in Sandersville, Georgia. The deal with an unnamed technology company is valued at $6.6 billion. The lessee plans to deploy infrastructure with a capacity of 175 MW, with commissioning scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2027. The contract includes two five-year renewal options, which could potentially increase the total deal value to $11.6 billion.
CleanSpark CEO Matt Schultz emphasized that this move marks the company's transition from pure Bitcoin mining to a diversified digital infrastructure model. Concurrently, the parties signed an agreement for exclusive negotiations regarding CleanSpark's entire Texas portfolio, which includes two sites totaling 718 acres with a potential capacity of up to 885 MW. The company expects the new contract to generate approximately $330 million in net operating income annually with nearly 100% operating margins. Recall that MARA Holdings has also taken a similar course towards AI infrastructure, recently purchasing a site in Texas for $600 million.
Analyst's comment: The June reports clearly demonstrate that even a drop in mining difficulty does not guarantee increased production. Operational issues and the transition to new business models are becoming the main factors. CleanSpark's strategy of diversifying towards AI infrastructure appears forward-looking, but it requires enormous capital investments and time. In the short term, this could put pressure on their mining metrics, but in the long term, it opens access to much more stable and high-margin revenues than the volatile Bitcoin market.