Bitcoin News

Story: Core Scientific and TeraWulf Ditch Bitcoin Mining as AI Revenue Surges Past 80%

By James Thorp

1 / 15

How Bad Is the Hashrate Decline. The combined hashrate of public miners fell 13.4% from Q4 2025 to Q2 2026.

2 / 15

This Isn't China 2021. People keep comparing the current hashrate drop to China's 2021 mining ban, which cut the…

3 / 15

What the Numbers Actually Mean. Colocation and HPC revenue are still small in absolute terms for most of these companies.

4 / 15

Public bitcoin miners are cutting hashrate — fast. A 21% drop over recent months tells you everything about where the money is moving right now.

5 / 15

Core Scientific basically isn't a bitcoin miner anymore. In Q2 2026, the company pulled in $136.7 million from colocation services and just $27.

6 / 15

Riot Platforms reported $23.2 million in data center revenue against $113.7 million from mining, so mining still dominates for Riot.

7 / 15

The combined hashrate of public miners fell 13.4% from Q4 2025 to Q2 2026. The broader Bitcoin network's average hashrate dropped too, though at a slower pace — 10.6%.

8 / 15

Cango is a clear example of how fast this can happen. The company entered the market in late 2024, peaked at 50 EH/s, then started decommissioning inefficient machines almost…

9 / 15

Keel Infrastructure went further. The company completed the full decommissioning of its U.S. mining operations to prepare for data center construction.

10 / 15

See also: Adam Back vs. Peter Todd: Bitcoins 21 Million Cap Debate Splits Core Developers

11 / 15

People keep comparing the current hashrate drop to China's 2021 mining ban, which cut the network's computing power roughly in half almost overnight.

12 / 15

What's happening now is different. There's no single triggering event. It's a slower grind driven by weaker mining economics, rising electricity costs, and the fact that AI…

13 / 15

And that's kind of the key point. Bitcoin miners, almost uniquely among tech operators, already own the land, power contracts, and cooling systems that AI data centers need.

14 / 15

MARA and American Bitcoin have kept expanding their mining operations, but those gains haven't been enough to offset what other companies are pulling back.

15 / 15

More context: Bitcoins Last 929,465 Coins Will Take Over 100 Years to Mine

The Currency Analytics

Want the full story?