Public BTC miners cut 21% hashrate

TLDR

Publicly listed Bitcoin miners have collectively cut their share of Bitcoins hashrate by roughly 21%, as several companies repurpose mining capacity for AI and high performance computing.

1. Miner Weekly finds public miners realized hashrate dropped sharply since late 2025, with the steepest cuts coming from firms pivoting infrastructure to AI data centers.
2. The Bitcoin networks total hashrate has also fallen, but remains high enough that difficulty adjustments are keeping block production broadly stable.
3. The key things to watch now are further miner pivots into AI, network hashrate trends, and how upcoming halvings reshape mining economics and security.

Deep Dive

1. Scale And Drivers Of The 21% Cut

Miner Weeklys cohort of public Bitcoin miners saw realized hashrate fall from 368.3 EH/s in Q4 2025 to 319.0 EH/s in Q2 2026, a 13.4% drop, with a 21.2% decline once Bitdeers growth is excluded, according to network and earnings data.

The biggest reductions come from companies like Core Scientific and TeraWulf, which now earn most of their revenue from AI/HPC colocation and leases rather than Bitcoin mining.

Others, such as Cango and Keel Infrastructure, have aggressively decommissioned or shut down mining fleets in certain regions to free up power and capital for new data center builds.

2. Impact On Bitcoin Security And Economics

Over the same period, Bitcoins overall network hashrate fell about 10.6%, from 1,071 EH/s to 957 EH/s, so public miners are shrinking faster than the network as a whole, while Bitdeers 44% hashrate growth helps offset some of the loss.

Hashrate is the raw computing power that protects Bitcoin against attacks; a lower hashrate means less security margin, but difficulty periodically adjusts so blocks still arrive roughly every 10 minutes.

Economically, the shift signals that at current prices and post?halving rewards, AI/HPC workloads can be more profitable per megawatt than mining, pushing public miners to treat Bitcoin as one business line rather than their sole focus.

3. Signals To Watch Next

First, monitor aggregate network hashrate and difficulty: a persistent downtrend without price recovery would mean security is being maintained with less hardware, leaving less buffer against shocks.

Second, follow quarterly reports from major listed miners for clues on how quickly capacity is being repurposed to AI and whether mining becomes a smaller share of their revenue mix.

Third, upcoming halvings and fee trends matter: as block subsidies shrink, the balance between transaction fees, miner profitability, and alternative uses for data center infrastructure will determine how much hashrate Bitcoin can sustain.

Conclusion

Public miners cutting about 21% of their hashrate while redeploying power to AI shows how elastic Bitcoins security budget is relative to broader data center economics. If BTC price, fees, or new efficiency gains do not improve miner returns, more capacity could migrate to AI, making hashrate, miner earnings, and fee dynamics important metrics for crypto users to track over the coming cycles.