Public Bitcoin miners, excluding Bitdeer, have reduced their hash rate by 21.2% in nine months, reflecting a shift towards AI and HPC.
Publicly traded Bitcoin miners, excluding Bitdeer, have seen their hash rate decline by 21.2% over the past nine months, as reported by MinerWeekly. The hash rate dropped from 368.3 EH/s in Q4 2025 to 319.0 EH/s in Q2 2026.
While the Bitcoin network's overall hash rate fell by a smaller margin, from 1,071 EH/s in Q4 2025 to 957 EH/s in Q2 2026, Bitdeer stood out with a 44% increase in its realized hash rate, reaching 63 EH/s.
This trend of reduced hash rate among miners is attributed to a strategic pivot towards AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. For instance, Core Scientific reported $136.7 million from new placements in Q2, contrasting sharply with $27.5 million earned from Bitcoin mining alone. Similarly, TeraWulf generated $31.9 million from HPC leasing, which accounted for 71% of its total revenue, compared to $12.8 million from mining activities.
Other companies have not fared as well in their transitions. Riot Platforms posted $23.2 million from data centers versus $113.7 million from mining, while Bitdeer earned $14 million from cloud AI services against $197.1 million from mining. Furthermore, Hut 8 and MARA reported diminished revenues from computing services, and Cipher and Keel Infrastructure have yet to achieve any HPC revenue.
Experts have noted that the current downturn reflects a challenging mining environment, exacerbated by competition for capital and electricity from burgeoning AI workloads. MinerWeekly also pointed out that following the mining ban in China in June 2021, the hash rate briefly plummeted to 57.5 EH/s but showed signs of recovery by December. Additionally, Bitcoin miners' revenue from transaction fees has reached its lowest point in a decade as of August 2026.
