Bitcoin Mining Industry Shifts Towards AI and HPC

Bitcoin's network hash rate has fallen into a prolonged decline, marking what industry executive Raphael Zagury calls the first 'hash-rate bear market' in the cryptocurrency's history.

The total computational power securing the Bitcoin network peaked at nearly 1.3 exahashes per second (EH/s) late last year and has since steadily decreased, according to a report from Wu Blockchain.

Zagury, CEO of Twenty One Capital, noted that the current decline is the longest stretch on record for the hash rate to recover after hitting an all-time high.

The shift in the mining industry's economic landscape is largely driven by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), with many publicly listed mining companies pivoting away from Bitcoin mining towards AI data center operations.