Miners' AI Pivot Brings Bitcoin Hasrate Down 50%

Bitcoin's network hashrate has fallen to 50% below its trend as miners shift towards artificial intelligence. Over the past year, the industry has seen a massive pivot, with operators repurposing their infrastructure and selling off mining hardware to transition into high-performance computing.

This diversification has allowed bitcoin miners to land lucrative deals, such as TeraWulf's 20-year data-center lease with Anthropic, which could potentially generate upwards of $19 billion in revenue. However, this shift has contributed to the decline in network hashrate, with the total processing power currently sitting roughly 50% below its expected growth trend.

A report from CoinShares noted that these sorts of post-halving contractions align with normal patterns seen at this point in past halving cycles. Despite a reduction in competition caused by miners taking their hardware offline, production costs remain elevated across the sector, with some operators facing costs exceeding $100,000 per bitcoin when the asset was trading below $60,000.

The growing difficulty of constructing new data infrastructure has driven the AI pivot, with existing data centers now commanding a premium. This premium has pushed some companies to abandon mining commitments altogether, such as Core Scientific's decision to cancel its agreement with Block's Proto division and prioritize AI infrastructure instead.