The mining industry of Bitcoin is confronting mounting financial strain as the hash price — a key profitability indicator — edges toward critical levels that could force smaller operators offline and put stress on the sector’s supply chain.

Currently hovering around $42 per petahash per second (PH/s), the hash price has declined steadily since July, when it peaked above $62 per PH/s. This downturn is prompting mining operations, already operating on slim profit margins, to consider halting production, according to TheMinerMag.

The decline has also rippled through the broader mining ecosystem. Hardware suppliers are reporting fewer orders as miners scale back expansion plans, while BTC-denominated sales are suffering from lower prices following October’s market downturn. Companies like Bitdeer have responded by shifting to self-mining to offset falling demand for their equipment.

Cost pressures and rising competition

Escalating energy costs, high expenses for hardware upgrades, and tightening margins have made Bitcoin mining increasingly competitive. As a result, several miners have started diversifying their operations into artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing data centers to stabilize revenue streams.

Diversification into AI and data services

The industry’s long-term challenges are amplified by the Bitcoin halving cycle, which cuts miner rewards by 50% every four years. Since April 2024, the block reward has fallen to 3.125 BTC, compared to 50 BTC in 2009, when mining could still be done with standard CPUs. Now, specialized ASIC machines are essential to stay competitive, as the Bitcoin network’s total hashrate has surpassed 1 zetahash per second (ZH/s), according to CryptoQuant.

This evolving landscape has driven many mining firms toward AI infrastructure and cloud compute ventures — a shift that has already produced multibillion-dollar deals. In October, Cipher Mining signed a $5.5 billion agreement with Amazon to provide computing power for Amazon Web Services over the next 15 years.

Similarly, IREN entered a $9.7 billion partnership with Microsoft in November to deliver GPU computing services, underscoring the growing convergence between crypto mining and the AI data economy.

Sources:

https://cryptoquant.com/asset/btc/chart/network-stats/hashrate?window=DAY&priceScale=log&metricScale=linear&chartStyle=line&sma=0&ema=0

https://theminermag.com/news/2025-11-06/miner-weekly-bitcoin-survival-mode

https://cointelegraph.com/news/miner-hashprice-near-40-miners-survival-mode