Bitcoin is going through its first hashrate bear market, Rapha Zagury, CEO of Twenty One Capital and founder of Elektron Energy, said in a speech at Bitcoin Asia 2026 on Sept. 2, according to BlockBeats.
Bitcoin’s network hashrate approached 1.3 ZH/s at the end of last year. It has since declined slowly and continuously, and the time elapsed since the network fell from its all-time high is now the longest on record.
Zagury said Bitcoin mining is not simply a good or bad business. The key factor is a miner’s position on the cost curve. Companies with lower energy costs and more efficient machines can maintain higher profit margins. Miners facing expensive power and inefficient equipment may be forced to shut down.
Bitcoin hash price has improved from earlier levels, but it remains relatively low by historical standards. Zagury said mining is more likely to outperform BTC when the price of Bitcoin rises faster than the network’s hashrate.
For companies deciding how to allocate capital, Zagury said the best risk-adjusted approach is not to choose exclusively between buying BTC and mining it, but to combine the two. He added that if there were only $1 available for allocation, he would prioritize buying BTC.
Zagury also addressed energy consumption. Energy use by itself does not mean waste, he said, describing energy as a foundation of economic development and human progress. In his view, one of Bitcoin mining’s main features is its highly flexible load. Mining machines can be switched on or off quickly in response to energy supply, allowing them to absorb idle or surplus electricity and support grid stability to some degree.
He said Bitcoin mining is also creating forms of “option value” that were less visible in the past. Those areas include energy utilization, market share, proximity to the Bitcoin protocol and infrastructure.
As demand for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, or HPC, grows, miners’ existing energy and data-center infrastructure could gain additional uses, including AI computing capacity.
Among large publicly listed mining companies, fewer are still able to continue Bitcoin mining at scale. Zagury said the industry is at a key point where an energy revolution and a Bitcoin revolution are meeting.