a significant decrease The network’s computing power is being driven by technological rivals.
Major Bitcoin miners are increasingly unplugging their mining rigs and repurposing their data centers for AI computing.
For years, miners have been chasing BTC rewards.
Some companies are now chasing AI computing instead.Hash rate dipping = major signal 🚨 pic.twitter.com/xG9rkuVQ4P
— Maartunn (@JA_Maartun) March 23, 2026
big discrepancy
Historically, Bitcoin’s hashrate (purple/pink band) and its price (white line) have moved in tandem. Players in the mining industry that plug in to earn profits typically have a higher hashrate.
Recently, a massive spike has seen the network reach an unprecedented 1.2K EH/s in early 2026.
However, we can clearly see a sudden and dramatic drop in hashrate.
With the Bitcoin price currently under severe strain, miners are capitulating and pivoting to AI.
Mining profit margins cannot match the astronomical premiums that tech companies are willing to pay for AI computing power.
Training and running large-scale language models (LLMs) requires large amounts of power and advanced cooling infrastructure. These are two things that Bitcoin has in abundance.
Publicly traded mining giants such as Core Scientific, Bit Digital, and Iris Energy are renovating their facilities to house high-end GPUs for AI clients.
Bitcoin mining currently generates returns of $57 to $129 per megawatt. For comparison, an AI data center can generate $200 to $500 per megawatt using the exact same power capacity.
According to late 2025 and early 2026 reports from Quantum Foundry and Disruption Banking, large miners are signing large long-term contracts. For example, IREN (formerly Iris Energy) has a $9.7 billion AI cloud services agreement with Microsoft. Meanwhile, Hut 8 signed a $7 billion AI infrastructure deal with Google.
In Wall Street’s view, these have been purely crypto miners for much longer. Rather, it is being evaluated as a “critical energy infrastructure asset” needed to fuel the AI ​​boom.
