Public bitcoin miners cut aggregate hashrate 13.4% as AI infrastructure revenue grows to replace mining income.

Publicly traded bitcoin miners are shedding capacity faster than the network itself, signaling a fundamental shift toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure.

BlocksBridge Consulting reported in its Miner Weekly newsletter that realized hashrate across public miners fell from 368.3 exahashes per second (EH/s) in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 319 EH/s in the second quarter of 2026—a 13.4% decline. Excluding Bitdeer, which continued expanding, the remaining cohort contracted 21.2% over six months, dropping from 324.6 EH/s to 255.9 EH/s.

Bitdeer's trajectory diverged sharply, growing realized hashrate 44% to 63 EH/s. The broader Bitcoin network's average hashrate fell only 10.6% in the same period.

The revenue shift at major operators underscores the pivot. Core Scientific pulled in $136.7 million in colocation revenue during Q2, nearly five times its $27.5 million from mining. TeraWulf posted $31.9 million in HPC lease revenue against $12.8 million from mining. Riot Platforms and Bitdeer remain earlier in this transition, with mining still dominating recent quarterly results.

BlocksBridge framed the pullback as an unwinding of the expansion cycle triggered by China's 2021 mining ban. That ban initially collapsed hashrate before miners relocated globally and rebuilt capacity, fueling a North American buildout as public operators raised capital and acquired power sites.

Now, thinner margins from the most recent halving cycle combined with soaring AI infrastructure demand have prompted several operators to repurpose their sites and electricity capacity away from bitcoin mining entirely.