Public Miners Rapidly Cut Back on Bitcoin Mining Capacity

Publicly traded bitcoin miners are cutting back on mining capacity at a faster rate than the overall network, according to BlocksBridge Consulting's latest Miner Weekly newsletter. This trend indicates that some operators are shifting their focus towards artificial intelligence and high-performance computing work.

The realized hashrate across a cohort of public miners dropped 13.4% from 368.3 exahashes per second (EH/s) in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 319 EH/s in the second quarter of 2026. If Bitdeer, which expanded its operations, is excluded, the remaining cohort shed 21.2% over six months.

Bitdeer's expansion stands out as it increased its realized hashrate by 44% to 63 EH/s. In comparison, the Bitcoin network's average hashrate fell 10.6% during the same period.

The shift in focus is evident from the revenue streams of some miners. Core Scientific pulled in $136.7 million in colocation revenue in the second quarter, surpassing its $27.5 million earnings from bitcoin mining. TeraWulf also reported $31.9 million in HPC lease revenue against $12.8 million from mining.

This development can be seen as a natural consequence of the post-China boom unwinding. BlocksBridge described it as 'the unwinding of the expansion cycle that followed China's 2021 mining ban,' which led to a sharp hashrate collapse and subsequent relocation of miners abroad.