Bitcoin’s seven-day average hashrate stood at 915 exahashes per second on August 31, marking 316 consecutive days below the network’s October 2025 peak of 1,151.6 EH/s. The drought represents the longest hashrate decline in a decade, surpassing the previous 252-day maximum recorded by Blockchain.com.
The persistence of depressed hashrate despite a 34.9% Bitcoin price rally from late June through late August signals a fundamental shift in mining operator strategy. Network hashrate declined 10.1% over the same period that Bitcoin recovered above $81,000, a divergence that underscores operator reallocation toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure.
“Bitcoin’s first sustained economic hashrate bear market,” according to Raphael Zagury, CEO of Twenty One Capital, a mining-focused investment firm.
Operator Capacity Reallocation
Major mining operators have systematically reduced Bitcoin mining capacity in favor of AI infrastructure deployment. IREN, a Bitcoin mining operator, reduced self-mining capacity from 50 EH/s in June 2025 to 23.2 EH/s by June 2026 while operating 40 megawatts of AI Cloud capacity by end of June.
TeraWulf, which operates both Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing infrastructure, energized 102 MW of critical-IT capacity in July while maintaining 145 MW of legacy Bitcoin mining capacity. Riot Platforms deployed 44.4 EH/s of mining capacity in July alongside 25 MW of critical-IT capacity delivered during the same period.
Bitdeer reached 76.7 EH/s of self-mining capacity in July. Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) reported 70.3 EH/s of energized hashrate as of June 30.
On August 31, Riot signed a 20-year compute agreement with Anthropic valued at $9 billion, formalizing the operator’s pivot toward AI infrastructure deployment alongside Bitcoin mining operations.
Mining Economics and Difficulty Adjustments
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty fell 1.31% on August 23 and rose 1% on August 8, when hashrate recovered toward 925 EH/s. VanEck estimated network hashrate at 885 EH/s during the week through August 11.
Mining economics remain constrained despite price recovery. The Puell Multiple, a metric comparing miner revenue to network value, averaged 0.73 over 30 days, placing it in the 16th percentile of historical values. Hashprice on August 31 stood at $39.36 per petahash per second per day, above the 30-day average of $34.63.
Mining difficulty remains 18.3% below its November 2025 peak. Block arrival time averaged 9 minutes 56 seconds on August 31.
The Hashrate Decline in Context
The 316-day drought reflects months of weak mining economics, summer power curtailments, and operator shifts toward AI and high-performance computing. Network hashrate sits 20.6% below the October 2025 record despite Bitcoin’s sustained price recovery, indicating operators are not restarting idle mining equipment even as profitability improves.
Hashrate increased 3.3% from the prior week through August 31, suggesting modest recovery momentum. However, the structural reallocation of operator capacity toward AI infrastructure represents a departure from historical patterns where price recovery typically triggered rapid hashrate expansion as dormant equipment returned to operation.
