A group of major public miners reduced Bitcoin production by 21% in the first half of the year amid a mass transition to supporting artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to calculations by Miner Weekly. The global hash rate, reflecting miner activity, fell by 10% during this period.
Several major industry players increased their hash rate, but their efforts were insufficient to compensate for the overall decline in activity. Core Scientific, IREN, Cipher Digital, TeraWulf, and Keel Infrastructure (formerly Bitfarms) reduced Bitcoin mining, while Bitdeer, MARA, Riot Platforms, and American Bitcoin increased cryptocurrency mining.
However, excluding Bitdeer, the hash rate of the remaining companies in this group decreased by 21.2%, from 324.6 EH/s (exahashes per second) to 255.9 EH/s. Bitdeer's capacity, on the other hand, increased by 44% in the first half of 2026, reaching 63 EH/s. This was achieved through the production of its own SEALMINER equipment.
MARA and American Bitcoin also continued to expand, but their growth was not enough to offset the capacity reductions at Cango, Cipher, Keel, Core Scientific, TeraWulf, and IREN.
The shift to the AI field is driven by higher, more stable, and predictable revenues compared to cryptocurrency mining. Companies that transformed earlier, such as Core Scientific and TeraWulf, are already generating more revenue from the AI sector than from mining.
In the second quarter of 2026, TeraWulf's revenues from leasing high-performance computing platforms accounted for 71%. For Core Scientific, it was 83%. The rest of the sector is at an earlier stage of transition.
Since the beginning of 2026, the overall global hash rate has fallen by more than 10%, from 1040 EH/s in January to below 900 EH/s in August. According to BitinfoCharts, the average hash rate over the last 24 hours was 888 EH/s.
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