Bitcoin miners' structural pivot to AI compute is expected to persist even if cryptocurrency prices recover, reflecting a permanent diversification into high-performance compute services.
Publicly traded Bitcoin miners that have shifted to artificial intelligence infrastructure are unlikely to reverse that decision even if Bitcoin prices rise further, according to a Q2 mining report published by CoinShares on September 15. Researcher Luke Nolan noted that already-signed contracts make the transition structurally irreversible for most operators. Core Scientific paid nearly $42 million to cancel an agreement for 15 EH/s of next-generation mining hardware, illustrating the financial cost of attempting such a reversal.
Many operators have committed to AI and high-performance computing leases lasting 15 years or more. These contractual obligations effectively lock them into the AI path regardless of Bitcoin's price trajectory. At least 35 EH/s of computing power is already scheduled to exit the publicly listed mining group—approximately 4.7% of Bitcoin's current network hash rate of 750 EH/s.
The financial incentive for AI is stark. CoinShares estimates AI infrastructure currently generates roughly $1.5 million in profit per megawatt, compared to approximately $500,000 per megawatt for Bitcoin mining. This threefold gap has driven the shift toward computing workloads. Keel, formerly Bitfarms, stopped mining entirely in June 2026. IREN plans to complete its full exit by end-2026, Cipher Digital by end-2027, and TeraWulf is winding down its remaining 145 megawatts of mining capacity. Each has made decisions too costly or contractually binding to unwind based on Bitcoin price recovery alone.
CoinShares expects that any sustained BTC price increase would encourage capacity expansion only among miners that have deliberately maintained flexible models—Riot, MARA, HIVE, and Bitdeer. These companies have avoided the long-duration infrastructure deals that would prevent rapid scaling of mining operations.
Q2 proved punishing for the sector. The average cash cost to produce one Bitcoin reached approximately $75,500 while the quarter closed with BTC at $58,400, leaving most listed miners operating at a loss. Bitcoin's monthly average hash price—revenue per unit of computing power—fell to an all-time low of $27.70 per petahash per second per day in June.
Conditions improved after quarter-end. Bitcoin's recovery to approximately $77,000 lifted the hash price to around $38 per petahash per second per day, moving most operators above cash breakeven. CoinShares, however, views this near-term improvement as immaterial to the core decision. The duration and scale of existing contracts, not near-term price performance, remain the decisive factor in whether committed operators return to mining.