Bitcoin’s 316-day hashrate drought shows why AI could make this mining downturn harder to reverse
Bitcoin’s hashrate has spent 316 days under its report as miners redirect energy towards AI.
The seven-day community common stood close to 914 exahashes per second on Aug. 31, about 20.6% under its October 2025 peak of 1,151.6 EH/s. The stretch with no new high is the longest in a decade, exceeding the earlier 252-day most in the identical Blockchain.com series.
The decline adopted months of weak mining economics, summer time energy curtailments and a rising shift by some operators towards synthetic intelligence and high-performance computing. Twenty One Capital CEO Raphael Zagury has described the episode as Bitcoin’s first sustained “financial hashrate bear market.”
That description has turn out to be extra vital as a result of Bitcoin itself has already delivered the type of worth restoration that traditionally helped revive mining.
BTC rallied 34.9% from late June through late August reaching as high as above $81,000, whereas community hashrate fell 10.1% over the identical interval, solely the second such divergence since 2012.
Higher Bitcoin costs enhance the greenback worth of block rewards and usually encourage miners to restart machines that grew to become uneconomic throughout a downturn. This time, the response has been a lot weaker.
The distinction is that among the energy and data-center capability leaving Bitcoin now has elsewhere to go.
Bitcoin’s rally has not introduced sufficient machines again
The standard restoration alerts are already showing throughout mining economics.
VanEck estimated community hashrate at roughly 885 EH/s within the week via Aug. 11, whereas mining problem stood 18.3% under its November 2025 peak. That was the most important problem drawdown since China’s 2021 mining ban.
The Puell Multiple, which compares the greenback worth of every day Bitcoin issuance with its one-year common, averaged about 0.73 over the previous 30 days, inserting it within the sixteenth percentile and pointing to unusually weak miner income situations.
Those pressures pressured marginal machines offline. Bitcoin then started doing what it was designed to do.
As hashrate falls, the protocol ultimately reduces problem, permitting the remaining miners to compete for a similar block subsidy with much less computing energy. Better margins can then entice idle capability again.
However, indicators of that rebound additionally emerged in August.
VanEck mentioned the Aug. 8 problem adjustment rose 1%, the primary upward transfer within the sequence it tracked, as hashrate recovered towards 925 EH/s. Difficulty later fell 1.31% on Aug. 23, offering one other spherical of aid.
By Aug. 31, Hashrate Index put seven-day hashrate at 915 EH/s, up 3.3% from 886 EH/s per week earlier. Blocks have been arriving each 9 minutes and 56 seconds, nearly precisely on Bitcoin’s 10-minute goal.
Hashprice had additionally improved to $39.36 per petahash per second per day, above its 30-day common of $34.63.
That mixture of a roughly 35% Bitcoin rally, decrease problem, and higher hash worth would usually make restarting machines more and more engaging. Yet hashrate stays far under its report.
AI modifications what occurs after a miner switches off
For some operators, shutting down Bitcoin machines now not means ready for mining margins to get well.
IREN cut put in self-mining capability from 50 EH/s in June 2025 to 23.2 EH/s by June 2026 because it decommissioned miners and redirected energy and data-center infrastructure towards AI Cloud Services. About 40 megawatts of AI Cloud capability was already working on the finish of June.
TeraWulf has additionally moved working capability towards high-performance computing. It reported 81 MW of critical-IT capability at June 30 and 102 MW energized in July, alongside 145 MW of legacy Bitcoin mining capability.
Riot Platforms highlighted how lengthy these various commitments can final when it signed a roughly $9 billion, 20-year compute settlement with Anthropic in August.
That modifications the economics of a mining restoration.
A machine taken offline as a result of hashprice fell may be restarted when Bitcoin turns into extra worthwhile. However, energy dedicated to a long-duration AI buyer can not return almost as rapidly, even when Bitcoin rallies and problem falls.
Years spent constructing mining operations have made the sector notably attractive to AI developers. Miners already management massive energy allocations, grid connections and data-center websites constructed to deal with dense computing hundreds.
The hashrate downturn can’t be attributed solely to that shift. Seasonal curtailments, notably in Texas, lowered mining in periods of high electrical energy demand, whereas inefficient fleets have been additionally shut down as margins deteriorated.
AI turns into necessary as a result of it might decide what occurs to that capability afterward.
Better mining economics now have to compete with AI
The subsequent part of Bitcoin’s hashrate recovery will present how a lot capability was merely idle and the way a lot has successfully moved on.
Some miners are nonetheless increasing aggressively.
MARA reported 70.3 EH/s of energized hashrate as of June 30, whereas Bitdeer reached 76.7 EH/s of self-mining capability in July. Riot elevated deployed mining capability to 44.4 EH/s from 38.5 EH/s even because it expanded into AI.
| Company | Observed working sign | Implication for hashrate restoration |
|---|---|---|
| IREN | Mining capability fell from 50 EH/s to 23.2 EH/s; about 40 MW of AI Cloud capability was working at June 30 | Converted infrastructure might not return via problem aid alone |
| TeraWulf | 102 MW of critical-IT capability was energized in July alongside 145 MW of legacy mining capability | HPC can soak up working capability whereas mining continues |
| Riot | Deployed mining capacity rose from 38.5 EH/s to 44.4 EH/s whereas 25 MW of critical-IT capability was delivered | AI infrastructure and mining can increase in parallel |
| MARA | Energized hashrate reached 70.3 EH/s at June 30 | Large-scale mining progress has continued |
| Bitdeer | Self-mining hashrate reached 76.7 EH/s in July | New capability remains to be coming into the community |
That leaves the business break up between operators nonetheless including Bitcoin machines, these diverting infrastructure towards computing clients, and corporations attempting to pursue each.
Bitcoin’s personal restoration mechanism stays intact. Difficulty continues to modify, blocks are arriving close to goal and the latest rebound towards 915 EH/s shows that some hashpower is returning.
But the 316-day drought suggests the response has not but been sturdy sufficient to restore the community’s late-2025 peak.
The query now’s whether or not bettering Bitcoin costs, hashprice and problem economics can pull sufficient idle machines again to finish that drought.
If they can’t, the rationale might more and more lie exterior Bitcoin itself: among the infrastructure that after waited for the subsequent mining restoration is now being paid to keep elsewhere.
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