Big public miners are making room for AI. Bitcoin’s hashrate is climbing anyway.
The network’s seven-day average has regained 1 zettahash per second—1,000 EH/s—over the past week and reached its highest level since March 3. That rebound is especially interesting given how much mining capacity the public companies have been shedding.
The recovery is showing up in difficulty. Bitcoin’s mining difficulty rose 5.92% on October 16, and the pace of block production so far in the current difficulty epoch points to another estimated 5.16% increase in about seven days. That estimate will move as more blocks arrive, but for now, the network is on course for two substantial increases in a row.
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That’s hardly the breathing room remaining miners might have expected from the AI migration.
We’ve been following that retreat. Earlier last month, we examined public miners’ declining realized hashrate alongside a 52% quarterly increase in directly reported HPC and AI revenue. Additionally, we looked at the hardware investment behind the capacity being displaced: roughly $1.5 billion equivalent, using an assumed purchase price of $20 per terahash.
Converting a mining site to AI is a lasting change. Once the machines are removed, the facility is rebuilt and its power is committed to AI customers, that capacity isn’t waiting for a better hashprice to switch back on.
So the recent rebound needs to be understood against that backdrop. The network is rebuilding hashrate despite those conversions. The replacement capacity has to come from elsewhere.
Some of it is easy to spot.
Take Bitdeer. Its September update showed self-mining capacity reaching 82.3 EH/s, up from 79.9 EH/s in August and 35 EH/s a year earlier. Its co-mining business, which places Bitdeer-owned machines in third-party data centers, grew to 28.7 EH/s from 21.6 EH/s. Across those two categories, that’s another 9.5 EH/s in a month. Bitdeer is pursuing AI, too. It just hasn’t stopped expanding its mining business along the way.
There may also be a quieter part of the recovery: small and medium-sized operators picking up equipment that the departing giants no longer need.
A mining site can leave Bitcoin for good without its machines sharing the same fate. Move those machines to a buyer with cheaper electricity and available rack space, and they can compete again. A discounted purchase price makes that proposition more attractive.
The resale channels are there. Sazmining, for example, lists pre-owned Antminer S21 XP machines for hosting in Paraguay and Texas. Those listings don’t identify the original owners or tell us how much public-miner inventory is reaching smaller buyers. But they show how equipment can find another route back into service.
The contrast is playing out in new hardware, too.
Core Scientific terminated its equipment agreement with Block and Proto Global during the second quarter, recording a $41.9 million loss as it moved toward high-density colocation. The original agreement covered chips representing 15 EH/s.
Meanwhile, Sazmining is offering individual buyers access to Proto immersion hashboards, with deployment and operation handled at a US site. That doesn’t directly establish that Sazmining is selling Core’s canceled inventory, but the timing makes the connection intriguing.
It’s a striking reversal of the 2021 mining arms race: the giants that once crowded smaller buyers out of the hardware market are stepping aside, while equipment finds its way into retail hands.
With one sharp difficulty increase already recorded and another taking shape, the competitive pressure is coming back.
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