The AI shift trend among Bitcoin miners may continue, as it yields 3x more profits. According to a CoinShares report, AI compute leases return about $1.5 million per megawatt (MW) annually. In contrast, BTC mining generates $500K per MW.
However, the BTC mining decline in Q2 has flashed key insights that have left experts conflicted about the future of the sector.
Bitcoin miners pay to stop mining
Notably, Core Scientific, a publicly listed miner, paid about $42M to cancel next-generation mining hardware. Additionally, Keel (formerly Bitfarms) and Cipher dumped part of their BTC reserves to fund AI and data center build-outs.
In fact, Keel ceased BTC mining in June, and IREN will follow suit by December 2026. At the same time, other public players like MARA have been slowly pivoting into the AI race.
Among these partial and full pivots, AI now dominates the revenue streams.
Overall, CoinShares estimates that 35EH/s hashpower will leave listed miners by the end of the year. And, even a BTC price rebound won’t change the AI pivot trend.
A BTC recovery is unlikely to reverse the AI transition. Core Scientific paid US$41.9m to terminate its 15 EH/s Proto agreement, while several companies have committed sites to 15-year leases.
Besides, strict regulation against AI and data center build-outs has made energized sites, including BTC mining locations, scarce assets. And with better returns, AI compute has become way more lucrative than traditional BTC mining.
In fact, BTC mining revenue dropped 3x from $60M in late-2025 to $20M in mid-2026 as crypto winter intensified. On the contrary, AI leases offer stable returns, unlike volatile BTC mining revenue.
What the shifting mining sector means for Bitcoin
The mining revenue’s decline followed BTC’s sharp drop from over $125K in October 2025 to below $60K in 2026.
According to CoinShares, the average cost of mining BTC jumped to $75.5K in Q2 2026 while the asset’s price slipped to a record low of $58.4K.
In other words, it was too expensive to mine BTC. This further boosted the AI pivot trend, dragging hashrate down by over 50% as miners partially or fully exited the space.
For CoinShares, the hashrate dip mirrors typical post-halving patterns and could rebound ahead of the next halving.
However, for economist Saifedean Ammous, BTC mining may have peaked and might be set to trend downwards.
I contend the deeper economics explain why aggregate mining may never return to its previous secular growth path.
For Ammous, the shrinking rewards (from 3.125 BTC to 1.56 BTC) from 2028 will make the sector less attractive. Interestingly, MARA CEO Fred Thiel has shared a similar outlook in the past.
While this could be bad news for BTC, it remains to be seen how the future will play out.
Final Summary
- AI compute generated 3x more annualized returns of $1.5M per MW to miners than BTC’s $500K
- CoinShares believes that even a BTC price rebound might not reverse the AI transition
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