Bitcoin Mining Industry Faces Record Costs and Shrinking Profit Margins
The Bitcoin mining industry is undergoing significant changes as miners face record costs and shrinking profit margins. According to CoinShares' latest quarterly mining review, listed miners fell below cash breakeven levels in aggregate during Q2 2026.
The weighted average ex-tax cash cost to produce one Bitcoin among listed miners reached about $75,500 in Q2 2026, while the monthly average hash price dropped to a record low of $27.7 per PH/s per day in June. This has led several companies to reduce their Bitcoin production or shift towards AI and high-performance computing services.
Core Scientific incurred a $41.9 million loss after canceling its remaining orders for next-generation mining hardware, removing approximately 15 EH/s of planned mining capacity. Meanwhile, Keel halted Bitcoin mining operations on June 29, and IREN and Cipher are moving closer to exiting mining activities, with more than 35 EH/s scheduled to leave from the listed mining group.
The report notes that companies are increasingly focusing on AI data centers and hosted computing services. IREN reported that AI cloud revenue surpassed mining revenue for the first time, while TeraWulf increased its focus on high-performance computing leases, which now account for most of its revenue.