Bitcoin hashprice sinks to 2-year low as AI pivots split miners

Record difficulty and declining on-chain fees have pushed Bitcoin mining profitability to a two-year low, creating a growing divide between miners surviving on thin margins and those reinventing themselves as data center operators for the AI ​​boom.

Mining was a homogenous industry that moved in sync The price of Bitcoin. However, it is now evolving into a two-speed economy, where hashpower defines success, not energy strategy.

At around $42.14 per terahash per day, the price of Bitcoin (the industry shorthand for mining revenue per unit of computational power) has fallen into the bottom 4% of its two-year range.

In the past month alone, it has fallen 19%, while the broader market’s pullback in Bitcoin to around $101,500 has only deepened the squeeze.

The real culprit is not the spot price.

It is the structural mathematics of the network itself: the difficulty has increased by 31% in the last six months, hashrate 23%, while the fees, once reinforced by ordinary activity and congestion, have fallen to their lowest since the spring. The result is pure compression, with more machines fighting for less reward.

For smaller miners, this combination is devastating. Many are operating below break-even levels, particularly those tied to high-cost electricity contracts or older hardware. The situation is strangely reminiscent of the previous cycles in 2020 and the end of 2022, when the weakest players capitulated just before a recovery.

However, this time the stress test takes place in a very different environment: the advent of AI and high-performance computing has created an entirely new escape valve for miners, allowing them to pivot their infrastructure towards non-Bitcoin workloads.

Earlier this week, Iris Energy announced a five-year, $9.7 billion deal with Microsoft to provide AI and data center capabilities, effectively turning part of its fleet into an HPC provider. The reaction of the shares was immediate, and the brokers began to revalue IREN, Scientific Core, Platforms of revoltand Cleanspark as “playing AI infrastructures” rather than pure Bitcoin proxies.

That change, anchored by the diversification of real income, is why miners’ equity can gather even when the hash price has fallen. The market is starting to reward grid-scale flexibility and long-term power contracts over hash production.

The contrast with legacy miners is stark. Companies that remain tied exclusively to Bitcoin production have little room to maneuver when margins collapse.

Miners’ earnings are now at their lowest profitability levels since April, as hashprice readings around $43 per PH/s/day are near multi-month lows. These companies are still paid entirely in Bitcoin block rewards and transaction fees, revenues that fall automatically with each increase in difficulty.

Unless they can cover the exposure or access ultra-cheap energy, they are stuck waiting for the next block subsidy or a spike in network tariffs.

Marathon Digital, meanwhile, is showing what scale can do to offset the crunch. The company recently reported a record quarterly profit of $123 million by doubling down on operational efficiency and new business lines adjacent to AI hosting.

Their revenue mix is ​​now a mix of mining operations and AI, which shows how the definition of a miner is changing. Marathon’s huge energy footprint allows it to reduce or redirect load opportunistically, selling excess power or leasing infrastructure for HPC tasks when the Bitcoin mining economy tightens.

The divergence is now visible in market data: equity investors treat hashprice weakness not as an existential risk, but as a filter that separates miners with sustainable business models from those who only pursue block rewards.

As by Bernstein The latest note said, “hashprice pain won’t hit AI-pivot miners.” That sentiment captures the ongoing structural change, which is that Bitcoin mining is evolving from a single-purpose search into a multi-market data infrastructure business.

Tracking when the decline could reverse: several clear markers.

The first is a difficulty plateau or rollover, which signals that the unprofitable hashrate has fallen offline, creating a natural rebalancing that raises the remaining miners’ share of rewards.

The second is a resurgence in chain fees, either from congestion or from a new wave of subscription-style demand. Or it can raise the price of the hashprice without any change in the price of Bitcoin.

The third, and perhaps most consequential trigger is the continued expansion of AI or HPC contracts. Every new megawatt diverted to external workloads reduces effective competition on the Bitcoin network, stabilizing margins for incumbents.

Other variables matter too: winter energy prices, curtailment incentives, and regional regulations all influence who can survive a prolonged period of economic pressure. Mergers, liquidations and site closures usually accelerate when the hash price is near its cycle lows.

Historically, this has been a contrarian signal for the broader market, a sort of prelude to the relief of the difficulty adjustment and the renewed accumulation of miners.

The next increase in difficulty offers the first real test of whether this compression has reached its limit. If hashrate growth stops while fees rise, hashprice could begin a slow mean reversion toward equilibrium.

Until then, the mining industry remains divided between those riding Bitcoin’s hardest math problem and those rewriting it entirely through AI.

The place Bitcoin hashprice drops to 2-year low as AI pivots split miners appeared first CryptoSlate.

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