Public bitcoin miners shed roughly 75 EH/s of realized hashrate in the first half of 2026 as they shifted power toward AI and high-performance computing. That retreat carries an estimated $1.5 billion price tag in mining hardware alone, and a separate review found approximately $1.1 billion in related impairments already booked.
A $1.5 billion hardware retreat
Public miners lost 75 EH/s of realized hashrate while their HPC and AI revenue rose 52% quarter over quarter, according to Miner Weekly. At an assumed acquisition price of $20 per terahash, that lost output equates to roughly $1.5 billion of mining machines — a figure that excludes the buildings, electrical equipment, cooling and installation needed to run them. Investors had already financed the capacity now being displaced, and at some sites the equipment was marked down within months of entering production.
Write-downs concentrate in two companies
A review of 12 tracked companies found approximately $1.1 billion in asset impairments and held-for-sale markdowns during the first half of 2026, with IREN and Core Scientific accounting for almost 89% of the total. IREN alone recorded roughly $695 million in impairments and held-for-sale markdowns after reaching 50 EH/s in June 2025, much of it tied to mining assets displaced by AI conversions. Core Scientific, by contrast, attributed its major mining impairment to deteriorating mining economics rather than the AI pivot itself.
Cipher's Black Pearl facility shows how fast the math can turn. The site began mining in mid-2025, then recorded a $96.1 million markdown on its machines after agreeing to convert to high-performance computing — those same machines had generated $57.9 million in revenue during 2025.
Financing is getting harder to find
Replacing mining capacity with AI infrastructure still costs cash even after the noncash write-downs. TeraWulf generated about $53 million in HPC leasing revenue in the first half while paying $131 million in cash interest across the company. Lenders, meanwhile, are growing more cautious: Société Générale and SMBC have become more selective about data center financing, while MUFG is also stepping back, The Information reported Thursday.
That squeeze arrives alongside renewed interest-rate pressure, after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark range by a quarter point to 3.75%-4%, and growing local resistance to new hyperscale projects in New York, Massachusetts and Chicago. AI may still prove the better use of these sites, but the return will hinge on how much mining value can be recovered before the new capacity starts earning.
Source: Bitcoin.com News
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