Miner Stocks Surge as Bitcoin Hashrate Declines

Bitcoin's network hashrate has been declining for nearly 287 days, but surprisingly, this hasn't had a devastating impact on publicly traded mining companies. In fact, their stocks are surging, with gains of up to 135% year-to-date through mid-May 2026.

The decline in hashrate began after Bitcoin's network peaked at around 1,157 to 1,160 EH/s in October 2025 and dropped roughly 15%. This was followed by a 4% decrease in the first quarter of 2026, marking the first quarterly decline in six years. Mining difficulty responded accordingly, with June 2026 seeing a 10.09% difficulty drop and July following with another decrease of around 5%.

The reason for this decline is attributed to the 2024 halving, which cut block rewards in half, compressing already-thin margins and causing some operators to reportedly lose up to $19,000 per Bitcoin mined.

However, mining companies have found a new use for their massive power infrastructure, redirecting it from SHA-256 hash computations to GPU-based AI workloads. Companies like TeraWulf, Cipher Mining, and Hut 8 have aggressively leaned into this pivot, with their stock prices surging while Bitcoin has traded in a range of $60,000 to $65,000.