The exit of miners will lead to the centralization of computing power, exacerbating the vulnerability of the Bitcoin network.
Written by: Blockchain Knight
Bitcoin has fallen to around $76,000, a decline of over 40% from its peak. For the average observer, this is just a routine adjustment, but for Bitcoin miners, the price crash, high network difficulty, and rising energy costs have created a perfect storm, resulting in a severe survival crisis.
Data from CryptoQuant shows that the miner profit sustainability index has plummeted to 21, the lowest since the end of 2024. Financial pressure has caused the total Bitcoin hash rate to drop by 12% since last November, marking the largest decline since the ban on mining in Asia in 2021, with the network hash rate falling to its lowest level since September 2025.
Miner profitability has reached a historical low. According to f2pool data, with a Bitcoin price of $76,176, a hash rate of 890 EH/s, and an electricity cost of $0.06 per kilowatt-hour, miners earn only $0.034 per day per terahash, with the hash rate price dropping to a historical low of $34 per PH/s.
Reflecting on specific mining machines, older and inefficient miners have an electricity cost ratio of 109%-162%, and have already fallen into losses before accounting for additional expenses.
Mid-generation mining machines have a cost ratio close to 100%, and even the latest models have a cost ratio of 52%, severely compressing profit margins.
However, unlike previous crypto winters, this time miners have a new "escape pod": the transformation to AI infrastructure.
The infrastructure required for Bitcoin mining, such as electricity and grid connections, coincidentally aligns with the massive computational demands of AI, and the willingness to pay in the AI sector is higher.
CoreWeave has transitioned from mining to AI cloud services, receiving a $2 billion investment from Nvidia; Canadian miner Hut 8 has signed a $7 billion, 15-year lease agreement for an AI data center.
Such transformations allow miners to escape the volatility of Bitcoin revenues and lock in long-term gains, but they also lead to a permanent diversion of some computing power, rather than a temporary shutdown while waiting for prices to rebound.
However, the loss of computing power poses a potential threat to the security of the Bitcoin network. Currently, the absolute security of Bitcoin remains very high, but a continuous decline in computing power will lower the marginal cost of attacks and reduce the resources needed to gain control of the network.
At the same time, the exit of inefficient miners will lead to the centralization of computing power, exacerbating network vulnerability.
CryptoQuant indicates that a significant amount of industrial computing power is currently in a state of thin profit or loss, and this metric can prospectively reflect the robustness of the network security budget relative to other electricity uses.
In the future, the miners' dilemma may give rise to three development paths:
- Industry consolidation, with efficient computing power occupying a larger share, slowing the growth of computing power while maintaining security levels;
- Accelerating the transition to a fee-driven security mechanism, relying on transaction fees to maintain miner incentives;
- Introducing external guarantee mechanisms, with institutions providing targeted support.
The core contradiction lies in the industry's need to weigh the costs of retaining hash power in the energy competition against the returns in the AI sector, which will ultimately determine the future direction of the Bitcoin mining market.
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