Bitcoin's hashrate closed its first half at a five-year low

• The hashprice fell to USD 27.7 per PH/s daily at the end of June, close to yearly lows.
• TeraWulf, the third largest public mining company by market capitalization, has exited mining.

The hashrate of the Bitcoin network fell by 17.5% during the first half of 2026, from 1,066 EH/s (exahashes per second) on January 1 to 879 EH/s by July 13, according to data from Hashrate Index. This is the first time in five years that the metric has closed a semester below its opening level.

The closest precedent occurred in the first half of 2021, when Bitcoin's hashrate dropped from 139 EH/s on January 1 to 103 EH/s by the end of June, a decline of 25.9% primarily caused by the ban on operations imposed by China on miners that year.

An obvious first factor is that mining revenues have been at a low for several months, as reported by CriptoNoticias, leading miners operating at negative profitability to shut down their equipment, decreasing the total computational power contributed to the network.

In this sense, the hashprice, the metric that estimates how much a miner earns for each unit of computational power they contribute to the network, reflects the negative moment in terms of profitability. This metric was around USD 60 per PH/s (petahashes per second) daily in mid-2025. By January 1, 2026, the hashprice had already plummeted nearly 50% to 37.6 USD/PH/day, and six months later, by the end of June, it reached 27.7 USD/PH/day, a semester decline of 26.33%. At the time of this article, the hashprice stands at 31 USD/PH/day.

Currently, the hashrate remains high in historical terms (despite the negative trend), the difficulty remains elevated near its highs, and the price of BTC is around USD 60,000, 50% of the all-time high of October 2025, when it surpassed USD 126,000. This combination increases competition and reduces mining revenues. When revenues fall, ASICs are disconnected.

Another factor contributing to the decline in Bitcoin's hashrate is that low revenues lead miners to seek new business opportunities. Among these new options, many are migrating fully or partially to the artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

For example, TeraWulf (WULF), the third largest public mining company by market capitalization, is one of the most visible cases. Its co-founder and CEO, Paul Prager, stated on July 13 that the company is no longer involved in Bitcoin and will focus on AI and high-performance computing.

Despite the semester decline, the current hashrate remains extremely high in historical comparison, ensuring the security of the Bitcoin network. The current 879 EH/s maintains a high economic cost for attempting to attack the network, as it would require gathering a quantity of hardware and energy beyond the reach of any actor.

While TeraWulf has already completed its exit from Bitcoin mining, other public miners like MARA Holdings and Riot Platforms, among other large companies, still combine both businesses at a time when mining profitability remains low and the demand for computing for artificial intelligence continues to expand.