Bitcoin’s seven-day hashrate average sat near 914 EH/s at the end of August, about 20.6% below its October 2025 peak after 316 days without a new high. During the late-June to late-August rally, bitcoin rose nearly 35% while hashrate fell about 10%. That is a major break from the usual pattern where a higher bitcoin price pulls machines back online.
The economics explain it. When bitcoin traded around $58,000 to $65,000, hashprice fell toward $32 per PH/s per day, at or below breakeven for many miners. High-cost U.S. fleets with expensive power or inefficient machines got crushed. Difficulty has since fallen and hashprice recovered to roughly $39, so I suspect we are closer to the end of this mining downturn than the beginning.
AI changes what recovery looks like. Miners used to shut off machines, wait for difficulty to adjust, and return when margins improved. Now the same power, grid connections, and data-center sites can be committed to AI and high-performance computing under long-term contracts. Some of that capacity is gone from bitcoin mining for years, even if bitcoin’s price keeps rising.
That creates a brutal sorting mechanism and an opportunity. Weak operators with bad capital structures leave. Efficient miners that stay receive a larger share of the same fixed block reward as difficulty adjusts. The hashrate bear market may be almost over. The automatic return of every powered-off machine is over for good.
Happy Friday.