Bitcoin’s 316‑Day Hashrate Drought Highlights AI’s Impact on Mining Recovery

Bitcoin’s seven‑day average hash rate has remained under its record level for 316 days, the longest stretch in a decade. The network measured about 914 exahashes per second (EH/s) on Aug. 31, roughly 20.6% below the October 2025 peak of 1,151.6 EH/s.

Why the hash rate is falling

Several factors have contributed to the prolonged decline:

• Weak mining economics and lower block‑reward revenue.
• Seasonal power curtailments, especially in Texas.
• Operators reallocating power and data‑center capacity to artificial‑intelligence (AI) cloud services and high‑performance computing (HPC).

Mining economics and difficulty adjustments

Despite a 34.9% rise in Bitcoin price from late June to late August, the network hash rate fell 10.1% in the same period. Difficulty is currently about 18.3% below its November 2025 peak, marking the largest drawdown since China’s 2021 mining ban. The Puell Multiple averaged 0.73 over the past 30 days, placing miner revenue in the 16th percentile.

Difficulty adjustments have provided modest relief: a 1% increase on Aug. 8, a 1.31% decrease on Aug. 23, and a 3.3% hash‑rate rise from 886 EH/s to 915 EH/s between Aug. 24 and Aug. 31. Block times have stayed close to the 10‑minute target, and hashprice improved to $39.36 per petahash per day.

AI and HPC diverting mining capacity

Operators such as IREN, TeraWulf and Riot Platforms have shifted significant portions of their infrastructure to AI and HPC workloads:

• IREN reduced self‑mining capacity from 50 EH/s to 23.2 EH/s, deploying about 40 MW of AI cloud capacity.
• TeraWulf added 102 MW of critical‑IT capacity in July while maintaining 145 MW of legacy mining capacity.
• Riot signed a roughly $9 billion, 20‑year compute agreement with Anthropic, committing long‑duration AI power.

These commitments mean that power once idle during low‑margin periods may not return quickly, even if Bitcoin prices rise and difficulty falls.

Continued mining expansion amid the shift

Not all operators are reducing hash power. Recent reports show:

• MARA reported 70.3 EH/s of energized hash rate as of June 30.
• Bitdeer reached 76.7 EH/s of self‑mining capacity in July.
• Riot increased deployed mining capacity to 44.4 EH/s from 38.5 EH/s.

This creates a split in the industry between miners expanding Bitcoin hardware, those diverting resources to AI/HPC customers, and those pursuing both.

Outlook

The Bitcoin protocol’s difficulty‑adjustment mechanism remains functional, and the recent uptick toward 915 EH/s shows some hash power returning. However, the 316‑day drought suggests that the recovery is not yet strong enough to reach the late‑2025 peak. Future hash‑rate growth will depend on whether idle mining equipment can be re‑activated faster than long‑term AI contracts lock up the underlying power and infrastructure.