Bitcoin Miners Shift Focus from Crypto to Artificial Intelligence

Bitcoin miners are juggling crypto and AI as the network's production cost sits at around $54,939. This is a notable data point at a time when miners are facing some of the toughest economics since the halving that slashed block rewards in half.

The hashrate peaked at approximately 995 EH/s in April 2026 but has settled to around 959 EH/s. However, something unusual happened last year: the network recorded its first quarterly drop in hashrate in six years due to miners redirecting their computational firepower toward AI and high-performance computing.

Public mining companies like CleanSpark, Core Scientific, and Hut 8 have begun reallocating portions of their infrastructure toward AI and HPC. Bitcoin mining revenues fluctuate with price and difficulty, but AI compute leases offer predictable, fixed-rate income.

This shift is accelerating, with forecasts suggesting AI-related contracts could represent a majority of revenue for some public miners by the end of 2026. Analysts at CoinShares estimate that Bitcoin's hashrate could reach approximately 1.8 ZH/s by year-end 2026 if favorable pricing trends hold.