Bitcoin Miners Turn Off Rigs for AI Money

According to Gizmodo and The Block, the Bitcoin network difficulty adjusted down 10.09% at block 953,568 on June 14, the second-largest negative adjustment of 2026 and the 11th largest downward adjustment in Bitcoin history. Galaxy Research attributed the driver primarily to a ~15% June price decline, which pushed hashprice below $30 per petahash and squeezed margins for older-generation miners. Gizmodo reports the 7-day average network hashrate has fallen from an all-time high of 1.151 zetahashes per second on October 18 to approximately 0.888 zetahashes per second.

The difficulty drop is not solely a price story. Gizmodo reports that public miners have been diversifying away from Bitcoin mining into AI infrastructure. CoinShares noted in its Q1 2026 report, per Gizmodo: "The migration of Bitcoin miners toward AI and high-performance computing is accelerating rapidly." CoinShares projected that listed miners could derive as much as 70% of their revenues from AI by end of 2026, up from roughly 30% at the time of the report, adding that "what began as a marginal diversification strategy is increasingly becoming the core business." CoinShares also warned that some shutdown of existing mining facilities would occur as part of this migration.

Gizmodo previously reported that Cango sold $305 million worth of bitcoin holdings to fund an AI pivot, and that Bitdeer sold its entire BTC stack. Gizmodo notes that Bitdeer still holds no bitcoin on its books as of June 13.

In a Blockspace interview cited by Gizmodo, Nakamoto Director of Corporate Development Brandon Bailey suggested a potential medium-term bottoming in mining economics: "We have so much power capacity that is now leaving the bitcoin mining space that is being allocated to high-performance computing. I think that, in the medium term, we could see a situation in which mining economics actually do appreciate materially just because you have so much power capacity that is tied to a different use. If bitcoin starts to recover in price, you can't easily pivot that power capacity." The bitcoin price rose above $67,000 on June 16 after news of a preliminary U.S.-Iran peace agreement, though it remains down sharply from its $125,000 October peak.