Public bitcoin miners have sharply reduced their hash rate: the bet on AI is changing the market
The public bitcoin mining sector is undergoing a structural shift: over the past nine months, the realized hashrate of leading companies (excluding Bitdeer) has declined by 21.2%. This is not just a correction, but a deliberate pivot toward high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.
The aggregate figure fell from 368.3 EH/s in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 319.0 EH/s in the second quarter of 2026. At the same time, the total bitcoin network hashrate declined much more gently—from 1,071 EH/s to 957 EH/s over the same period, or just 10.6%. This gap is explained by the fact that some players are actively winding down mining, while others, like Bitdeer, are expanding it. The latter increased its hashrate by 44%—to 63 EH/s—offsetting competitors' declines.
AI Is Eating Mining
The key driver is economics. Revenue from colocation and AI infrastructure is becoming more attractive than traditional mining. Core Scientific earned $136.7 million in the second quarter from additional colocation deals, while mining brought in just $27.5 million. At TeraWulf, revenue from HPC leasing reached $31.9 million—71% of the total—while mining contributed only $12.8 million.
The transition is uneven. Riot Platforms currently earns $23.2 million from data centers versus $113.7 million from mining. Bitdeer records $14 million from cloud AI services and $197.1 million from its core segments. Hut 8 and MARA have only partially diversified, while Cipher and Keel Infrastructure have yet to start earning from HPC. This indicates that the industry is in a transitional phase, where only those who have managed to restructure their business model will survive.
The current downturn is not a temporary fluctuation, but a consequence of weak mining economics and fierce competition for capital and electricity from AI workloads. For comparison: after China's mining ban in June 2021, the network hashrate briefly fell to 57.5 EH/s but recovered by December. Back then, the cause was external; now it is internal and strategic.
My view: we are witnessing not capitulation, but evolution. Miners no longer want to depend on bitcoin volatility and fee income, which fell to a decade low in August 2026. Shifting capacity to AI is insurance against future crises, but it creates a risk of reduced network decentralization if private miners do not fill the resulting vacuum.