Bitcoin''s network hashrate has fallen roughly 17% below its record, and for once the explanation is not price.
Listed mining companies reduced their share of the network''s computing power by more than 13% this month, according to network data compiled by analytics firms, as operators redirected electricity, land and capital toward artificial-intelligence and high-performance computing workloads.
The trade is a margin calculation. A megawatt sold to an AI tenant on a multi-year contract produces predictable dollar revenue; the same megawatt pointed at the bitcoin network produces a probabilistic share of a block subsidy that halves every four years. After the most recent halving, the older machines in most fleets earn very little at prevailing power prices.
Funding that conversion has required selling coins. Several public miners have drawn down bitcoin treasuries to pay for the electrical and cooling work that AI density demands, reversing a strategy many of them adopted after the last cycle.
Falling hashrate is not, by itself, a problem for the network. Difficulty adjusts roughly every two weeks, and a smaller pool of miners means better economics for those who stay — the mechanism that has kept bitcoin producing blocks through every previous shakeout.
The longer question is who owns the security budget. If the largest industrial operators become data-center companies that mine with spare capacity, the network''s defenses become a byproduct of someone else''s business plan.