Miners Abandon Bitcoin for AI-Driven Profits Amid Weakening Hash-Rate

Publicly-traded Bitcoin miners are repurposing their computing capacity to meet rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), as the economics of traditional mining weaken.

A recent report from BlocksBridge Consulting found that realized hash-rate among a group of public miners fell 13.4% to 319 exahashes per second (EH/s) in the second quarter from 368.3 EH/s in the fourth quarter of 2025, excluding Bitdeer, the decline was 21.2%.

The shift towards AI and HPC-related workloads is driven by increasing revenue from these activities. Core Scientific reported $136.7 million in second-quarter colocation revenue, compared with $27.5 million from Bitcoin mining, while TeraWulf generated $31.9 million from HPC leases versus $12.8 million from mining.

Bitcoin's network hashrate declined 10.6% over the same period, highlighting the faster retreat by some publicly traded miners. Keel, formerly BitFarms, recently shut down its U.S Bitcoin mining operations after Q2 2026 revenue dropped over 50% YoY.