Three leading mining companies — CleanSpark, BitFuFu, and Canaan — have published their operational reports for June, and all of them show a 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 not for everyone.
CleanSpark mined 614 BTC in June, compared to 671 BTC in May. BitFuFu showed an even sharper decline — from 177 BTC to 125 BTC. Canaan, in turn, reduced production from 90 BTC to 64 BTC.
CleanSpark attributes the decline to a drop in average operational hashrate: from 46 EH/s in May to 43 EH/s in June. Meanwhile, the company's balance sheet holds 13,924 BTC. BitFuFu's total computing power fell from 19.5 EH/s to 15 EH/s due to a reduction in leased capacity. However, the company continues to expand its own fleet: an additional 1,200 S21 XP miners were deployed in June, increasing hashrate to 3.5 EH/s, with plans to connect another 2,000 devices in July.
Canaan explains the drop in mining output by scheduled power grid maintenance at one of its sites. Meanwhile, its joint venture in Texas has recovered from May disruptions caused by wildfires. The company added 49 BTC to its balance sheet, ending June 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's stock fell 1.5% to $0.2.
CleanSpark: Pivot to AI Infrastructure
On July 14, CleanSpark signed a 20-year lease agreement for a data center campus in Sandersville, Georgia, with an unnamed investment-grade technology company. The contract is valued at $6.6 billion. The lessee will deploy 175 MW of infrastructure, with commissioning scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2027. The agreement includes two options to extend for an additional five years each, which, if exercised, could bring the total deal value to $11.6 billion.
According to CleanSpark CEO Matt Schultz, this agreement marks the company's transition from Bitcoin mining to a diversified digital infrastructure model. Simultaneously, the parties signed an exclusivity agreement for negotiations covering CleanSpark's entire Texas portfolio, which includes two sites totaling 718 acres with potential capacity of up to 885 MW. The company expects the contract to generate approximately $330 million in net operating income annually, with nearly 100% operating margins.
CleanSpark began its pivot toward AI infrastructure in the fall of 2025. Recall that mining company MARA Holdings also purchased a site in Texas for $600 million for similar purposes.
My analysis: June data confirms the trend toward diversification among major miners. Declining production amid falling difficulty is a worrying signal, pointing to operational issues and market overheating. However, the signing of such large contracts, like CleanSpark's, shows that the future of mining lies not only in Bitcoin extraction but also in monetizing energy assets through AI infrastructure. This could become the new norm, and investors are already beginning to price it in.