Finance13 August, 20262 min read
Public Bitcoin Miners Cut Realized Hashrate 13.4% as AI Infrastructure Revenue Rises
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Public miners' realized hashrate dropped 13.4% as AI infrastructure revenue grows. Operators redeploy electricity and data centers toward AI and HPC work.
6 outlets told this the same way.
Hashrate falls as AI rises
Public Bitcoin miners cut mining capacity faster than the Bitcoin network overall, with BlocksBridge Consulting reporting that realized hashrate among a cohort fell from 368.3 exahashes per second (EH/s) in Q4 2025 to 319 EH/s in Q2 2026, a 13.4% decline. The pullback was steeper when excluding Bitdeer, with realized hashrate dropping from 324.6 EH/s to 255.9 EH/s, or 21.2%, while Bitdeer’s realized hashrate rose 44% to 63 EH/s.
By comparison, the Bitcoin network’s average hashrate declined 10.6% over the same six-month period, suggesting miners’ reductions outpaced the broader network. BlocksBridge Consulting framed the shift as a longer transition in which some miners redeploy electricity, sites, and operational expertise toward data centers and high-performance computing (HPC).
Non-mining revenue takes lead
The same BlocksBridge Consulting analysis tied the hashrate contraction to a revenue mix shift, pointing to growing contributions from non-mining activities such as colocation and HPC leasing. Core Scientific generated $136.7 million in colocation revenue in Q2, compared with $27.5 million from Bitcoin mining, while TeraWulf reported $31.9 million in HPC lease revenue versus $12.8 million from mining.
TheEnergyMag said colocation supplied 83% of Core Scientific’s quarterly sales, up from 67% in Q1, and reported that HPC lease revenue increased to $31.9 million, or 71% of total revenue, for TeraWulf. In the same reporting, Bitdeer’s AI cloud services generated $14 million compared with $197.1 million from mining-related activities, while Riot Platforms reported $23.2 million in data center revenue against $113.7 million from mining.
Post-China boom unwinds
BlocksBridge Consulting attributed the current pullback to the unwinding of the expansion cycle that followed China’s 2021 Bitcoin mining ban, which triggered a sharp hashrate decline before miners relocated overseas. TheEnergyMag described how China’s 2021 ban briefly removed roughly half the Bitcoin network’s computing power, with hashrate bottoming at 57.5 EH/s in June 2021 and the network almost fully recovered by December.
It said the United States emerged as the largest mining hub and that the post-China recovery helped trigger an institutional expansion race that pushed the network beyond one zettahash per second. TheEnergyMag added that only one halving has occurred since that expansion began and that accumulated machines and electrical infrastructure are being idled, impaired or depreciated faster so their power can be reassigned to GPUs.