Bitcoin hash rate falls 19% as miners exit for AI deals

Bitcoin's 30-day mean hash rate has fallen 19% since November 2025 to 898 EH/s, the longest nine-month decline in network history, per Glassnode.

"Today it sits in its coldest stretch since FTX: late in the bear, but not yet the unanimous deep blue that previously marked a floor," Rafael Schultze-Kraft, co-founder of Glassnode, said of the platform's Bitcoin Cycle Position Heatmap, which aggregates 45 price metrics.

Mining difficulty has contracted 19.9% from its November 2025 peak near 156 trillion to 126.23 trillion as of Aug. 5, the third-deepest drawdown of the ASIC era. Difficulty turned negative on a year-over-year basis for only the second time in Bitcoin's history — the first since China's 2021 mining ban. Publicly traded miners sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026, exceeding their combined sales for all of 2025, while VanEck data shows average daily miner revenue fell 39.5% year over year to about $28.5 million.

The contraction is structural rather than cyclical. Miners are signing 12- to 20-year AI hosting leases on the same power capacity that once ran ASICs, with public mining firms holding over $70 billion in AI contracts. Hut 8's contracted AI portfolio has climbed to $26.6 billion, while Core Scientific's AMD-anchored leasing deals could generate over $24 billion. Some mining stocks have surged more than 430% even as BTC declined roughly 46% over the past year.

Poolin's Chapter 11 Filing Marks First Major Casualty

Poolin and two affiliated U.S. entities filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New Jersey, listing about $173 million in debt — including roughly $164 million in IOUs issued to Poolin Wallet users after withdrawals were frozen in 2022. The companies plan to sell two mining sites in West Texas with a combined reserve price of $52 million. What creditors ultimately recover will hinge on that asset auction.

AI Pivot Reshapes Miner Economics

Bitdeer produced 990 BTC in June, up 388% year over year, while its AI cloud business generates approximately $76 million in annual recurring revenue with GPU utilization at 95%. CleanSpark signed a 20-year data center lease covering 175 MW at its Sandersville, Georgia campus, expected to generate roughly $6.6 billion in contracted revenue. Hut 8 signed a second 15-year lease for 352 MW at its Beacon Point campus in Texas, lifting its total contracted AI portfolio to $26.6 billion with initial delivery scheduled for the second quarter of 2028.

Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a decree accelerating digital asset market development, including cross-border settlement mechanisms and tax incentives for compliant mining businesses. Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance data shows Bitcoin mining's annualized electricity consumption rose about 38% to around 190 TWh by December 2025, with low-carbon energy's share climbing from 52.4% to 59.4%.

The divergence between mining stock prices and Bitcoin's price reflects a fundamental shift in how the market values these companies. Investors are pricing miners on power contracts and AI revenue potential rather than block rewards — a change that could permanently reduce the hash rate's sensitivity to Bitcoin price cycles.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.