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Mining Hashrate Plummets, Miners Dump Bitcoin -- Even the Most Devout Believers Are Leaving?
For a long time, miners have been marked as the most devout believers and long-term bulls of Bitcoin, and besides paying water and electricity bills, the "mine only, never sell" model has also become an unwritten rule in the industry. However, since 2026, Bitcoin's global network hashrate has shown a clear downward trend. Public data shows that Bitcoin's global network hashrate has dropped significantly from its peak of approximately 1.1 ZH/s in October 2025, falling to around 977 EH/s as of January 2026, a decline of nearly 15%. Entering February, the hashrate continued to decline, with the 7-day average hashrate breaking below 1 ZH/s, falling to approximately 993 EH/s.
🔍The decline in hashrate is not accidental, but the result of multiple factors working together.
✅First, the sharp increase in mining difficulty has compressed miners' survival space. On February 19, 2026, Bitcoin network difficulty surged from 125.86 T to 144.39 T, with a single increase of 14.72%, marking the largest single adjustment since May 2021. The surge in difficulty means mining enterprises need to invest more hashrate and electricity costs to maintain their original output share.
✅Second, the collapse of hashprice (hashrate price) has made miners' profitability increasingly difficult. Driven by the surge in network difficulty and coin price volatility, the network-wide Hashprice has plummeted to below 30 USD/PH/s/day, approaching its historical low. In this situation, the vast majority of miners using outdated models or with electricity costs higher than 0.06 USD/kWh are already at the brink of shutdown profitability, and some have even fallen into negative gross margin status.
The decline in hashrate has also triggered a series of chain reactions. To adapt to the reduction in hashrate, Bitcoin mining difficulty was forced to be lowered. In February 2026, Bitcoin mining difficulty decreased by 11.16% to 125.86 T, marking the largest single negative adjustment since China's mining industry cleanup in July 2021.
What seems even more terrifying comes next. Under the dual pressure of declining hashrate and difficult profitability, miners dumping Bitcoin has become increasingly common and a focal point of market attention. According to Checkonchain's difficulty regression model, as of March 13, 2026, the average production cost of Bitcoin was approximately 88,000 USD, while Bitcoin's trading price at the time was around 69,200 USD, with a gap of nearly 19,000 USD, meaning the average miner loses approximately 21% on each Bitcoin mined. The serious inversion between cost and selling price has forced miners to maintain operations by dumping Bitcoin.
From specific data, the scale of miners' dumping efforts is significant. In January 2026, Riot Platforms sold 1,080 bitcoins, raising approximately 96 million USD, used to acquire the Rockdale site and develop AI computing data center projects. In February, Bitfarms sold its Paso Peñas mine for 30 million USD and plans to rebrand to accelerate its transformation into a digital infrastructure service provider. Bitdeer's liquidation movement pushed miners' dumping to its climax, as it completely liquidated its 1,132.9 bitcoins in February 2026, becoming the first listed mining company to publicly announce "zero Bitcoin holdings." Bitdeer founder Wu Jihan responded by stating "current zero holdings do not represent the future," implying that the liquidation is a phase-based strategic adjustment.
❓❓So what has driven miners' concentrated exit?
First, cost pressure is the most direct factor. As mining difficulty increases and electricity costs rise, miners' production costs continue to increase, while Bitcoin prices have failed to rise correspondingly, resulting in extremely compressed profit margins. To cover electricity fees, equipment depreciation, and other operating costs, miners have no choice but to sell their Bitcoin holdings. Second, debt pressure is also an important reason for miners' dumping. Many mining enterprises leveraged heavily during periods of industry prosperity, and when the industry downturn arrived, the pressure of maturing debt forced them to dump Bitcoin to repay debts. Additionally, the need for strategic transformation has driven some miners to sell Bitcoin. Some mining enterprises have identified promising prospects in AI computing services and decided to redirect capital from Bitcoin mining to AI computing infrastructure construction, requiring them to dump Bitcoin to raise transformation funds.
As for the controversial Bitdeer, with continuously increasing mining difficulty and coin price volatility, mining enterprises' profit margins have been extremely compressed. Meanwhile, AI computing services have demonstrated vigorous development, becoming a new profit growth driver. Bitdeer's mining business itself controls massive computing resources, and redirecting some of this computing power from cryptocurrency mining to AI computing services gives it natural advantages. Reports indicate that Bitdeer plans to focus the raised capital on data center expansion, AI cloud service growth, and R&D of high-performance mining hardware. For example, Bitdeer recently launched the Sealminer A2 miner and received investment from Tether, further confirming its diversification intentions.
For the Bitcoin market, mining enterprises' transformation may increase market selling pressure in the short term, but from a medium to long-term perspective, it may not constitute sustained negative factors. On one hand, the scale of mining enterprises' dumping relative to Bitcoin's daily tens of billions of dollars in trading depth is limited in impact; on the other hand, the exit of inefficient miners will optimize the market supply structure, beneficial for Bitcoin price stability.
📊In summary, the decline in Bitcoin mining hashrate, miners' dumping behavior, and Bitdeer's liquidation event all signal that the Bitcoin mining industry is undergoing a profound transformation. In the future, the Bitcoin mining industry will gradually evolve from a model purely dependent on Bitcoin mining to the computing resource management industry. Bitdeer's liquidation event is a microcosm of mining enterprises seeking transformation. In an avalanche, no snowflake is innocent. When a bear market arrives, retail investors feel the pressure, and the burden on whales is not light either. Shutdowns and dumping may be "cutting off a limb to survive," while transformation is about living better. Finding every possible way to survive is the only choice now, waiting for the bull market to return, and believing that the industry will once again be thriving.
This day will surely come. #BTC #ETH