$1.5 Billion in Mining Hardware Investment Wiped Out by AI Pivot

The public bitcoin miners' decline in hashrate during the first half of 2026 comes with an estimated cost of $1.5 billion in equivalent hardware investment, assuming a purchase price of just $20 per terahash (TH/s).

This figure is based on the miners losing 75 EH/s of realized hashrate while their directly reported high-performance computing and AI revenue rose 52% quarter over quarter.

The revenue growth highlights what operators were gaining, but putting a purchase price on the disappearing hashrate helps illuminate what they had already paid for in mining machines.

A separate review by TheEnergyMag of 12 tracked companies identified approximately $1.1 billion in asset impairments and held-for-sale markdowns during the first half of 2026, with IREN and Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) accounting for almost 89% of the total.