Bitcoin miners’ hashrate drops 13.4% as AI infrastructure revenue rises

Public Bitcoin mining companies are shrinking their realized hashrate faster than the broader Bitcoin network, according to a BlocksBridge Consulting analysis reported in Miner Weekly. The data suggests some operators are redeploying electricity, facilities, and hardware toward data-center and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads rather than expanding crypto mining.

In the latest Miner Weekly update, BlocksBridge Consulting tracked a cohort of public Bitcoin miners and found realized hashrate declined from 368.3 EH/s in Q4 2025 to 319 EH/s in Q2 2026—down 13.4%. When excluding Bitdeer, the contraction was larger: realized hashrate fell 21.2% from 324.6 EH/s to 255.9 EH/s over the same six-month span. Bitdeer, by contrast, increased its realized hashrate by 44% to 63 EH/s.

Key takeaways

• Public miners’ realized hashrate dropped 13.4% between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026, while the Bitcoin network’s average hashrate fell 10.6%.
• Excluding Bitdeer, the public-miner cohort’s realized hashrate declined 21.2%, indicating a stronger pullback from many large listed operators.
• BlocksBridge’s numbers point to a shift in resource allocation—electricity and compute capacity moving toward data centers and HPC.
• Core Scientific and TeraWulf are increasingly earning from non-mining activities, with colocation and HPC leases outpacing mining revenue in recent quarters.
• The change is tied to the post-China mining boom unwinding and the parallel rise in AI infrastructure demand since 2022.

Public miners retreat faster than the network

The gap between industry-wide network trends and what’s happening at listed miners matters because realized hashrate at major operators often reflects strategic choices: whether to run machines at full tilt, pause less efficient operations, or repurpose capacity. While Bitcoin’s aggregate hashrate fell 10.6% over the period covered by BlocksBridge, the cohort of public miners declined more sharply, dropping 13.4% from 368.3 EH/s to 319 EH/s.

The divergence becomes more pronounced when looking at the composition of the cohort. Without Bitdeer, realized hashrate fell 21.2% from 324.6 EH/s to 255.9 EH/s. That larger contraction suggests that many public operators were not merely adjusting output with the broader cycle—they were reducing mining footprint relative to peers, or limiting the use of their most readily available power for Bitcoin blocks.

Bitdeer’s opposite direction reinforces that the trend isn’t uniform across all listed miners. BlocksBridge reported Bitdeer’s realized hashrate rose 44% to 63 EH/s during the same six-month window, implying that at least one major operator continued to treat mining expansion as economically viable while others pulled back.

Why the shift is happening: mining economics versus AI-driven demand

BlocksBridge framed the pullback as the unwinding of the expansion cycle that followed China’s 2021 Bitcoin mining ban. That regulatory shock triggered one of the steeper declines in network hashrate, followed by a recovery as miners relocated overseas and re-established operations in other jurisdictions.

In North America, the migration and subsequent capital deployment helped public miners expand. Many raised funds and acquired new power sites to increase mining capacity. But with one halving cycle later, the cost-and-demand equation has changed. According to BlocksBridge’s framing, weaker mining profitability combined with surging demand for AI infrastructure since 2022 has encouraged several public miners to redirect sites and power capacity away from pure Bitcoin mining.

That matters for investors because “miner earnings” are no longer tightly linked to one variable—Bitcoin network economics—at least not for the largest operators pursuing diversification. Instead, revenue becomes increasingly tied to how much capacity can be monetized through data-center services, colocation, and HPC leasing, where customer demand is driven by the AI build-out rather than solely by block rewards and transaction fees.

Non-mining revenue is moving to the center of the story

BlocksBridge’s report also points to another signal of this transition: the share of revenue coming from activities other than mining. In the examples highlighted, Core Scientific generated $136.7 million in colocation revenue in Q2, compared with $27.5 million from Bitcoin mining. TeraWulf, in turn, reported $31.9 million in HPC lease revenue versus $12.8 million from mining.

The implication is straightforward: for these operators, facilities and power are being monetized as compute infrastructure for third parties, not only as a way to mine BTC. Cointelegraph previously covered these financial dynamics in separate stories—such as Core Scientific’s revenue mix and TeraWulf’s data-center and HPC expansion—both of which are consistent with the broader BlocksBridge narrative about miners evolving into infrastructure providers.

For context within the cohort, the article notes that Riot Platforms and Bitdeer remained earlier in the transition, with Bitcoin mining still accounting for the majority of revenue in their latest reported quarter. That contrast is important: it helps explain why the overall public-miner hashrate decline isn’t identical to a universal exit from mining. Some companies are deepening the AI/data-center pivot, while others are still heavily dependent on mining cash flows.

What to watch next

The next phase likely hinges on whether the non-mining expansion continues to offset mining profitability pressure—and on how quickly remaining public miners decide to scale down operations in less efficient locations. Investors should watch both realized hashrate trends across cohorts and disclosures about revenue mix, because the sector’s direction appears to be determined as much by electricity monetization strategy as by Bitcoin’s underlying network changes.