Updated October 10, 2026. Rewritten with current hashrate and difficulty data, the latest miner-to-AI deals, and sources. Earlier versions linked to a live dashboard that is not available.
Since late 2025, the biggest public Bitcoin miners have been turning their power sites into data centers for artificial intelligence. That shift, combined with a weaker Bitcoin price, pulled network hashrate well below its peak for much of 2026. Here is what happened and what it means for anyone running one or a few machines.
From peak to slide
- October 2025: network hashrate peaked near 1.16 zettahashes per second (1,160 EH/s), and difficulty hit an all-time high of 155.97 trillion on October 29.
- February 2026: difficulty fell more than 11%, the largest drop of the year, after winter-storm power curtailments and a sharp price drop.
- Early March 2026: hashprice, the revenue a miner earns per unit of hashrate, fell to about $28 to $30 per petahash per day, the lowest since the 2024 halving.
- June 2026: difficulty fell another 10.09% to 124.93 trillion, with hashrate down about 23% from its peak.
- Since then: hashrate has partly recovered. Difficulty was back to about 132.7 trillion by October 11, 2026.
Why the big miners are moving to AI
Mining revenue changes every day with the Bitcoin price and difficulty. AI hosting contracts pay fixed amounts for years. Public miners already own what AI companies need most: large power connections, land and cooling. In the past year several signed very large deals:
- Core Scientific: a 12-year contract with CoreWeave worth about $10.2 billion for roughly 590 MW of capacity
- IREN: a $9.7 billion agreement with Microsoft at its Childress, Texas campus
- Hut 8: a 15-year, 245 MW lease with Fluidstack in Louisiana valued at $7 billion
- TeraWulf: high-performance computing contracts totaling about $12.8 billion
Many of the same companies also sold Bitcoin to fund the build-out. Public miners sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026, including about 15,133 BTC sold by MARA in March.
What this means for small-scale miners
Bitcoin adjusts mining difficulty about every two weeks so that blocks keep arriving roughly every 10 minutes. When large miners unplug machines, difficulty falls and every remaining machine earns a bigger share of the rewards. That is the upside for small operators: a hosted machine earns a little more per day after a big downward adjustment.
The downside is that it rarely lasts. Hashrate came back through the summer, and difficulty has climbed again since June. Price matters even more: the same drop in price that pushes big miners out also cuts what every remaining machine earns in dollars. Lower difficulty does not guarantee a profit; it only softens the squeeze.
From my own experience operating an Antminer S21+ at a hosted facility in Washington State, the margins are thin enough that both moves show up quickly in monthly results. At today’s difficulty and a Bitcoin price around $82,000, an S21+ earns roughly $9 a day in block rewards before costs, which our buyer’s guide breaks down in detail.
Is the network less secure?
Hashrate in the 900 EH/s range is still an enormous amount of computing power, and the network kept producing blocks normally through the 2026 drops. The longer-term questions are about concentration and fees: if mining becomes a side business for a handful of large companies, and block rewards keep halving, transaction fees will need to carry more of the cost of securing the network. Those are open debates, not immediate risks.
What to watch
- Difficulty trend: a run of downward adjustments helps remaining miners; a run of increases means hashrate is returning.
- Hashprice: the simplest single measure of mining revenue per unit of hashrate.
- Hosting capacity: if hosting providers convert ASIC space to AI racks, hosted miners could face higher prices or fewer options.
- Bitcoin price: a strong rally would likely bring idle hashrate back and push difficulty up again.
Sources
- Bex: Public miners sold 32,000 BTC in Q1 2026 as they pivot to AI (April 22, 2026)
- CoinMarketCap Academy: BTC mining difficulty drops 10% (June 2026)
- Shattered: Bitcoin hashrate and difficulty in 2026 (September 5, 2026)
- CoinWarz: Bitcoin difficulty (October 11, 2026)
- S&P Global Market Intelligence: Bitcoin miners pivot to AI and HPC (February 25, 2026)
- CryptoTimes: Bitcoin holds near $82K (October 10, 2026)
This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not financial or investment advice. The author owns a Bitcoin miner and holds BTC.