Bitcoin mining revenue hits an all-time low! Mining farms shift to AI infrastructure, with major hash rates plummeting by 12%

Bitcoin’s price has plummeted to around $76,500, and mining is facing a crisis. The profit and loss index has dropped to 21, the hash rate has decreased by 12%, creating the largest mining shutdown in history. Daily revenue per terahash has fallen to a new low of only $0.034, with the latest mining machines’ electricity costs accounting for 52% of income, and older models reaching losses of 109-162%. Hut 8 has signed a 15-year, $7 billion AI leasing contract, and CoreWeave is acquiring mining farms to shift focus to GPU-based computing.

Bitcoin Mining Revenue Drops to $0.034 per Terahash

(Source: F2Pool)

The excitement from Bitcoin reaching an all-time high in October has faded, and the industry’s backbone—the Bitcoin network—is now facing a brutal reality. While casual observers might see this as a normal market correction, the internal situation at mining farms is far more severe. The sharp decline in flagship digital asset prices, combined with persistently high network difficulty and rising energy costs, has created a perfect storm for operators.

Latest data from the mining pool f2pool shows that revenue compression is already very serious. On February 2, their hardware electricity cost dashboard estimated Bitcoin’s price at about $76,176, with the network hash rate approaching 890 exahashes per second (EH/s), miners paying $0.06 per kWh, and daily income around $0.034 per TH.

Luxor Technology’s hash rate index indicates that just a few months ago, spot hash rate prices were close to $39 per million gigahash per second (PH/s) per day. Historically, this number was already low, and as of now, it has fallen to a record low of about $35. Currently, f2pool’s price is $0.034 per TH/s, which equals $34 per PH/s, confirming that miners are operating at the lowest point in history.

When these economic factors are mapped onto a single machine, it’s easy to understand why hash rate is declining. Assuming Bitcoin’s reference price is $75,000, and electricity costs remain at $0.06 per kWh, the latest Antminer S21 XP Hydro miner’s electricity cost accounts for about 52% of its total revenue. This miner has a hash rate of approximately 473 TH/s and consumes 5,676 watts.

Electricity Cost Percentage for Different Generations of Miners

Latest (S21 XP Hydro): Electricity costs 52% of revenue, sustainable but with razor-thin margins

Mid-range (S19 XP, A1466i): Electricity costs 92-100% of revenue, close to or at shutdown point

Older models (A1366, M50S, S19 Pro): Electricity costs 109-162% of revenue, mining at a loss per coin

In simple terms, under Bitcoin priced at $75,000 and using mainstream electricity rates, many hardware mining setups are already losing money before debt payments, custody fees, or general expenses. This widespread loss situation is extremely rare in Bitcoin’s mining history; even during the lows of the 2022 bear market, a significant proportion of miners maintained positive cash flow.

AI Infrastructure Becomes a Lifeline for Miners

This current revenue collapse is different from previous crypto winters because the infrastructure needed for Bitcoin mining is also essential for large-scale AI computing. Unlike the struggling Bitcoin network, AI infrastructure providers are willing to pay for this, often bidding far above what mining yields.

CoreWeave, a former mining company, exemplifies this shift. It has transitioned from the crypto sector to become a “new cloud” specialist focused on AI workloads, recently securing a $2 billion equity investment from NVIDIA to accelerate data center development. By 2025, the company plans to acquire mining firm Core Scientific for billions of dollars, positioning mining farms and power contracts as prime GPU locations rather than ASIC farms.

Other publicly known Bitcoin miners are also shifting toward AI. For example, Canadian operator Hut 8 recently signed a 15-year, 245 MW AI data center leasing agreement worth about $7 billion at River Bend. This deal effectively locks in long-term economic benefits, contrasting sharply with Bitcoin mining revenue volatility.

For shareholders, these transformations offer a reasonable exit, allowing them to escape the 30% price decline. They can exchange cyclical Bitcoin income for the stable AI cash flow that currently commands a premium valuation. However, for the Bitcoin network, this raises a more complex question: what happens when a component of its security infrastructure finds companies offering higher returns elsewhere?

Permanent Hash Rate Loss Threatens Network Security Model

Sei Labs co-founder Jeff Feng describes this period as “the biggest capitulation of Bitcoin miners since 2021,” believing that large miners shifting to AI computing is intensifying this decline. Unlike previous cycles where some hash rate simply paused until prices recovered, part of it is being permanently reallocated.

If a 245 MW site is fully converted to AI applications under a long-term lease, that electricity can no longer be used for future hash rate expansion. This permanent loss differs fundamentally from past cyclical shutdowns, where miners temporarily shut down and then reactivated when prices rebounded. Once a farm signs a 15-year AI lease, even if Bitcoin’s price rises to $126,000, the infrastructure won’t revert to mining because the contracts lock in long-term use.

Undoubtedly, Bitcoin’s overall security remains extremely high. Even with recent price drops, the cost to accumulate enough hash rate to attack the network is still prohibitively high. However, the concern shifts to attack vectors and composition: as hash rate continues to decline, the marginal cost of attack decreases, and with less honest hashing power on the network, the resources needed to acquire a disruptive share of computing power are reduced.

This trend also narrows the scope of stakeholders maintaining the blockchain. If established, high-cost operators exit, leaving only a few ultra-efficient miners profiting, control over block production could become increasingly centralized. This creates a vulnerability, which is masked by the impressive hash rate data. CryptoQuant’s “extremely low reward” label is essentially a warning that, based on current block rewards and fees, a significant portion of industrial hash rate is operating at slim or even negative margins.

From now on, miner pressure could influence Bitcoin’s development in several ways. One path is quiet integration, where the most efficient hash rate holders dominate block production after difficulty resets. Another is accelerating the shift toward a fee-driven security model, making the Bitcoin ecosystem more reliant on transaction fees. A third is explicitly introducing external guarantees, with institutions supporting spot ETFs similarly to how banks maintain capital adequacy ratios.