Public bitcoin miners are abandoning their core business. The weighted average cash cost to produce one bitcoin among listed miners reached $79,995 in Q4 2025, according to CoinShares. Bitcoin has traded in the $67,000–$70,000 range throughout late March 2026. That is a loss of roughly $10,000–$1...
"We are no longer a Bitcoin company." — Ben Gagnon, CEO, Bitfarms (now Keel Infrastructure)
Public bitcoin miners are abandoning their core business. The weighted average cash cost to produce one bitcoin among listed miners reached $79,995 in Q4 2025, according to CoinShares. Bitcoin has traded in the $67,000–$70,000 range throughout late March 2026. That is a loss of roughly $10,000–$13,000 per coin mined.
The response has been a sector-wide defection to artificial intelligence infrastructure. Over $70 billion in cumulative AI and high-performance computing contracts have been announced across the public mining sector. Listed miners have collectively liquidated more than 15,000 BTC from peak treasury levels to fund the transition. Marathon Digital alone sold 15,133 BTC for $1.1 billion in a three-week window. Bitfarms announced a full exit from bitcoin mining and rebranded as Keel Infrastructure. Core Scientific's CEO described its remaining mining operations as "essentially in runoff."
The network is responding. Bitcoin's hashrate posted its first quarterly decline in six years in Q1 2026, dropping roughly 20% from its October 2025 peak of 1,160 EH/s to approximately 920 EH/s. Three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments followed — the first such streak since July 2022. The two largest mining pools, Foundry USA and AntPool, now jointly control approximately 51.5% of global hashrate.
The April 2024 halving cut block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. Transaction fee revenue, which briefly spiked around the halving event, has since declined as spot ETF demand channels capital away from on-chain activity. The result: an economics problem that no amount of hardware efficiency can solve at current prices.
CoinShares' Q1 2026 mining report pegs the weighted average cash cost to produce one bitcoin at $79,995 among publicly listed miners. With bitcoin trading near $68,000 in late March, average losses stand at approximately $12,000 per coin. Hash price — the revenue a miner earns per petahash per day — fell to $28–$30, an all-time post-halving low, in March.
The break-even range across the sector spans $50,000–$100,000 per bitcoin, depending on energy costs, hardware generation, and facility efficiency. Mid-generation hardware requires electricity rates below $0.05/kWh to remain cash-positive. Next-generation ASICs, including the Bitmain S23 and Bitdeer SEALMINER A3, operating below 10 joules per terahash, are expected to deploy in the first half of 2026 — but they arrive into a market where the math still does not work for most operators.
Rather than wait for bitcoin to recover, the publicly listed mining sector has executed a collective pivot. Over $70 billion in cumulative AI and high-performance computing contracts have been announced:
| Company | AI/HPC Deal Value | Duration | Status | |---------|-------------------|----------|--------| | TeraWulf (WULF) | $12.8 billion | Multi-year | Contracted; stock up 25% on announcement | | Core Scientific (CORZ) | $10.2 billion | 12 years | CoreWeave colocation; 200 MW dedicated | | Hut 8 (HUT) | $7.0 billion | 15 years | River Bend campus lease | | Cipher Digital | Multi-billion | Multi-year | Google-backed Fluidstack agreement | | IREN | $500M+ annualized | Scaling | 200 MW liquid-cooled GPU capacity under construction | | Riot Platforms (RIOT) | $25M annual NOI (phase 1) | 10 years | AMD lease at Corsicana; 600 MW under evaluation |
The economics explain the speed of defection. Bitcoin mining infrastructure costs $700,000–$1 million per megawatt. AI infrastructure costs $8 million–$15 million per megawatt — but delivers operating margins above 85% with multi-year revenue visibility. AI hosting generates approximately 2.5x more gross profit per megawatt than mining.
Listed miners could derive as much as 70% of their revenue from AI by end of 2026, up from roughly 30% today. Core Scientific's AI colocation revenue already accounts for 39% of its total. TeraWulf is at 27%. IREN is at 9% and scaling.
Riot Platforms' Corsicana facility, with 1 GW total capacity, projects $1.6 billion–$2.1 billion in net operating income if fully converted to AI hosting. For context, Riot's trailing twelve-month bitcoin mining revenue does not approach those figures.
The industry that once defined itself by accumulating bitcoin is now selling it. Publicly listed miners have collectively reduced their BTC treasuries by over 15,000 BTC from peak levels.
The largest single liquidation came from Marathon Digital (MARA). Between March 4 and March 25, 2026, Marathon sold 15,133 BTC — roughly a quarter of its total holdings — generating $1.1 billion. The capital was deployed to repurchase $1.0 billion in convertible senior notes at a 9% discount, capturing an $88.1 million savings and reducing shareholder dilution risk. Marathon retains approximately $2.3 billion in bitcoin holdings.
CEO Fred Thiel framed the sale as a balance sheet decision: "Our decision to sell a portion of our bitcoin holdings reflects a strategic capital allocation move designed to strengthen our balance sheet and position the company for long-term growth."
Other notable treasury reductions:
The pivot to AI is not being funded solely through BTC sales. The sector has taken on substantial debt to finance data center construction and GPU procurement.
Cipher Digital issued $1.7 billion in senior secured notes in November 2025. The immediate impact: quarterly interest expense surged from $3.2 million across the first nine months to $33.4 million in Q4 alone — a 10x increase in a single quarter.
IREN has issued $3.7 billion in convertible notes across five series. TeraWulf carries $5.7 billion in combined convertible notes and senior secured notes. Marathon maintains a $350 million bitcoin-backed credit facility, though its loan-to-value ratio climbed to 87% as prices fell toward $68,000, approaching margin call territory.
The debt loads are predicated on AI contract revenue materializing over multi-year timelines. If AI demand contracts — or if large customers like CoreWeave face financial stress — miners-turned-AI-hosts face the same leverage risk that has historically punished the crypto mining sector during downturns.
The defection is visible on-chain. Bitcoin's network hashrate peaked at approximately 1,160 exahashes per second (EH/s) in early October 2025. By late March 2026, it has fallen to roughly 920 EH/s — a decline of approximately 20%. Q1 2026 marked the first quarterly hashrate decline in six years, ending five consecutive years of double-digit growth.
Three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments followed, including a 7.76% drop at block 941,472 — the second-largest downward adjustment of 2026. This is the first streak of consecutive negative adjustments since July 2022.
CoinShares forecasts hashrate recovery to 1.8 zetahashes by end of 2026, contingent on bitcoin recovering to $100,000. If prices remain in the $67,000–$70,000 range, that forecast is unlikely to materialize.
The concentration question is stark. Foundry USA controls 33.63% of global hashrate. AntPool holds 17.94%. Combined, two pools control 51.5% of total mining power. Over 95% of blocks are mined by just six pools.
Geographic concentration presents a related concern: the United States, China, and Russia together control approximately 68% of global hashrate, though the U.S. gained roughly 2 percentage points of market share in Q4 alone. New entrants — Paraguay and Ethiopia — have entered the top-10 hashrate rankings, providing some geographic diversification.
One counterintuitive outcome: as large U.S. public miners redirect capacity to AI, their share of hashrate may decline, potentially improving network decentralization by creating space for smaller, geographically diverse operators.
The market has rendered its verdict. Miners with secured AI/HPC contracts trade at 12.3x next-twelve-month sales. Pure-play bitcoin miners trade at 5.9x — less than half the valuation multiple.
TeraWulf's stock jumped 25% on its AI contract announcements. MARA's stock rose 10% after its $1.1 billion BTC liquidation. Bitfarms fell on its mining exit announcement but has since traded on its AI infrastructure valuation.
The valuation gap creates a self-reinforcing dynamic. Miners with AI contracts can raise capital at lower cost. Miners without AI contracts face higher capital costs, weaker balance sheets, and are forced to sell BTC at depressed prices to fund operations — further pressuring bitcoin's spot market.
Marathon's CEO offered a forward-looking frame for the sector: "By 2028, you'll either be a power generator, be owned by one, or be partnered with one."
The bitcoin mining industry entered this cycle as a group of companies that secured the network and accumulated bitcoin. It is exiting as a group of companies that build AI data centers and sell bitcoin to fund them.
The economic logic is straightforward: AI hosting delivers 2.5x more gross profit per megawatt, with margins above 85% and multi-year contractual visibility. Mining delivers negative margins at current prices with zero revenue visibility beyond the next difficulty adjustment.
The network implications are less straightforward. A 20% hashrate decline and rising pool concentration test assumptions about bitcoin's decentralization guarantees. The difficulty adjustment algorithm will continue to function — it always has — but the question is whether the remaining mining capacity is sufficiently distributed to maintain the network's security model.
For bitcoin, the miners' defection is a stress test. For the miners, it may be a rational exit. The data suggests the industry has made its choice. What remains to be seen is whether the $70 billion in AI contracts deliver on the revenue projections that justify the leverage, the BTC sales, and the abandonment of the business model that built these companies.