Analysts noted that the mining economy will deteriorate in 2026, with Bitcoin trading below its estimated cost of production for five straight months. JPMorgan, citing CoinShares’ first quarter mining report, said it is estimated that around 20% of miners are currently unprofitable.
Financial pressures are prompting miners to sell more of their Bitcoin holdings. More than 32,000 listed mining companies liquidated $BTC Sales in the first quarter exceeded sales for all of 2025 combined, according to data cited in the report.
As a result, even relatively small price changes have an increasingly large impact on network activity. When Bitcoin falls below its production cost, high-cost operators tend to shut down their equipment, resulting in a lower hashrate and lower mining difficulty. The bank cited the second week of June as a 10% drop in mining difficulty, the second such decline this year.
Looking ahead, analysts expect hashrate sensitivity and mining difficulty to remain as long as Bitcoin remains below its estimated cost of production, which is currently around $78,000. The world’s largest cryptocurrency was trading at around $64,700 at the time of publication.
As mining margins come under pressure, Bitcoin miners are turning to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) to diversify their revenue.
The appeal is simple and clear. AI hosting contracts can offer a more stable multi-year revenue stream and higher profit margins than Bitcoin mining, a more volatile economy weighed down by increased network competition and the 2024 halving.
