Bitcoin mining stayed under broad pressure in July, while an increasing number of mining companies and infrastructure operators moved deeper into AI and high-performance computing.
Miner stress indicators remain under pressure
According to analysis from Bitcoin Magazine Pro, Bitcoin network hashrate has been in decline for about 287 straight days, while mining difficulty is down 19.9% from its historical peak. The report described the move as the third-deepest difficulty drawdown since ASIC miners became dominant, suggesting that the current miner capitulation has lasted close to historical extremes.
Over the same period, BTC fell about 46% over the past year, yet some publicly listed mining companies saw their share prices rise by more than 430%, driven mainly by a pivot into AI and high-performance computing. The report also said miners are generating about $30 million in daily revenue, with only about $200,000 coming from transaction fees, a level still far from offsetting the ongoing decline in block subsidies after halvings.
Bitcoin News reported that a composite miner cycle pressure indicator has dropped to a new low for 2026 and moved deep into an undervalued zone. The metric combines the Puell Multiple and an inverse miner capitulation index to track miner revenue and cost dynamics. When both measures fall together, the indicator has historically captured extreme points in Bitcoin cycles more effectively than either measure alone.
Similar synchronized drops previously appeared near major Bitcoin bottoms in 2015, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024. The only prior time the composite metric touched 0.00 was during the 2015 miner capitulation, when Bitcoin fell from around $300 to $160 in less than a week. Bitcoin News said the indicator has now shown similar behavior again in 2026, pointing to an unusually severe level of miner stress.
VanEck said BTC is trading around $63,700, down about 33% from its six-month high, while derivatives positioning still looks cautious. One-month put-call implied volatility skew climbed to 11.4 percentage points, and annualized perpetual funding over the past 30 days was about 4.5%, a range that has historically aligned with below-average returns over the following 30 to 180 days.
In the same report, daily miner revenue was down 39.5% year over year to about $28.5 million, while revenue per unit of hashrate fell to roughly $30.6 per PH/s per day, near multi-year lows. BTC unmoved for more than one year accounted for 60.8% of circulating supply, indicating that longer-term supply remains relatively firm.
CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr said on X that BTC balances held by miner-linked OTC addresses have dropped from 500,000 BTC in November 2021 to 139,700 BTC, a decline of nearly 72%. He said the metric has been falling for more than four years, showing a steady reduction in that reserve base.
CryptoOnchain said on-chain data shows a structural shift in the behavior of long-term holders and miners. Over the past week, average miner outflows rose 564%, while inflows of coins aged 18 to 24 months into Binance moved sharply above a 30-day baseline. CryptoOnchain said old coins and miner rewards moving to exchanges at the same time usually indicate a distribution phase. It also said Binance stablecoin net inflows averaged negative $126 million per day, pointing to weak spot liquidity, while Binance funding rates rose 87% week over week and turned positive, showing that speculative traders were still building leveraged long positions. In its view, the market may struggle to form a clear structural bottom until stablecoin inflows recover enough to absorb selling from miners and older holders.
According to BitcoinTreasuries, public companies have net bought 166,984 BTC so far this year, more than double the 81,153 BTC mined across the network over the same period. That works out to average daily purchases of about 912 BTC by public companies.
Operating updates from mining companies
Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) said it produced 990 BTC in June, up 388% year over year. Its proprietary hashrate rose to 73.0 EH/s, and total managed hashrate reached 86.1 EH/s. The company said AI cloud annual recurring revenue increased to about $76 million, while GPU utilization reached 95%. It also signed a 10-year lease for 21.7 MW of IT load capacity in Malaysia, with delivery expected in the first quarter of 2027. A lease for the Tydal AI data center in Norway has been signed as well, though some conditions still need to be met.
CleanSpark said it signed a 20-year data center infrastructure lease with an unnamed global technology company carrying a high investment-grade profile. The agreement covers 175 MW of critical IT load at the Sandersville campus in Georgia and is expected to begin delivery in the fourth quarter of 2027. The initial lease term is expected to generate about $6.6 billion in contract revenue, rising to as much as about $11.6 billion if both five-year extension options are exercised. The same customer also secured an exclusive letter of intent for up to 885 MW in planned power capacity in CleanSpark's Texas portfolio.
In its June 2026 operating update, CleanSpark said it produced 614 BTC during the month, with a daily peak of 22.57 BTC and an average daily output of 20.46 BTC. Year to date through 2026, production reached 3,724 BTC. As of June 30, total holdings increased to 13,924 BTC. The company sold 179 BTC on the spot market in June and sold another 250 BTC through call option exercises, while receiving 25 BTC through put option exercises and 244 BTC through delta-neutral basis trading. Operating hashrate stood at 50 EH/s, and contracted power capacity reached 1.8 GW.
TeraWulf is seeking about $3.5 billion in debt financing to build an AI data center campus in Kentucky that will be leased to Anthropic. The financing is expected to begin this year and is being led by Morgan Stanley, with possible structures including leveraged loans and high-yield bonds. The campus has already been leased to Anthropic under a 20-year agreement expected to generate about $19 billion in contract revenue.
MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) said it reached a definitive agreement with HIF USA to acquire a large energy site in Matagorda County, Texas. The property spans more than 1,200 acres and is expected to provide an initial 1 GW of grid capacity by October 2027, rising to 2 GW by April 2028. MARA plans to develop the site into a large digital infrastructure campus supporting both HPC and Bitcoin mining through a partnership with Starwood Digital Ventures. Once the deal closes, and including the previously proposed acquisition of the Long Ridge Energy & Power project, MARA's potential total power capacity would double to about 4.8 GW. The company has already invested more than $1.2 billion in Texas.
In an interview with Natalie Brunell, MARA CEO Fred Thiel said AI data centers generate meaningfully more revenue per unit of power than Bitcoin mining. He said MARA has more than 4 GW of energy capacity today and can continue mining on that infrastructure before it is converted for AI data center use. Thiel also said MARA is not a digital asset treasury company and that its Bitcoin holdings are part of a cash management strategy. He said the company previously sold about 20,000 BTC and used the proceeds to repurchase discounted bonds and reduce debt. He added that he has not lost confidence in Bitcoin, but sees the asset's main weakness as its inability to produce yield.
Core Scientific, which operates Bitcoin mining and AI/HPC data centers, posted second-quarter revenue of $164.2 million, up about 109% year over year. High-density colocation revenue totaled $136.7 million and made up 83% of total revenue. Revenue from self-mining Bitcoin fell about 66% to $21.54 million and generated a gross loss of $12.17 million. In the first half of 2026, the company mined about 695 BTC, sold 2,385 BTC, and ended the period holding 848 BTC worth about $50 million.
BitFuFu said it produced 125 BTC in June, down 29.4% from the prior month, and held 1,671 BTC at month-end. Total managed hashrate fell to 15.3 EH/s, but proprietary hashrate rose 9.4% month over month to 3.5 EH/s. The company deployed 1,200 S21 XP miners in June and plans to deploy another 2,000 in July.
Canaan (NASDAQ: CAN) reported June 2026 mining data showing production of 64 BTC. Crypto reserves reached record levels of 1,915 BTC and 3,952 ETH at month-end. As of June 30, global operating hashrate was 7.45 EH/s and energized hashrate was 14.86 EH/s. Average all-in power cost for the month was $0.043 per kilowatt-hour. The Alborz joint venture facility, which had previously been affected by wildfire conditions, recovered substantially in June. The company also said it completed a transfer to the Nasdaq Capital Market on July 1 with its trading symbol unchanged and applied for an additional 180-day compliance period to regain the minimum bid requirement.
Bloomberg reported that shares of American Bitcoin, co-founded by Eric Trump, are down more than 95% from their peak, wiping out more than $600 million in value from the roughly 6% stake held over the past 10 months. The company carried out a 1-for-15 reverse stock split this week to maintain its Nasdaq listing and hit a record low on Wednesday. American Bitcoin said it remains committed to mining and accumulating BTC. It added 500 BTC on Monday, bringing total holdings to more than 8,000 BTC. In the first quarter, it recorded an operating loss of $118.2 million, including a $117.2 million impairment on its Bitcoin reserves.
Ionic Digital said its Form S-1 registration statement has been declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the company expects to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on July 28 under the ticker IOND. The listing is a direct listing, meaning the company will not issue new shares and will not receive proceeds from sales by current shareholders. Ionic Digital took over related Bitcoin mining assets through the Celsius bankruptcy restructuring and previously issued shares to Celsius creditors. In June, it completed a $400 million private placement.
CryptoSlate reported that South Korean Bitcoin treasury company Bitplanet signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with Nasdaq-listed Antalpha and mining ecosystem partners. The plan calls for the introduction of KRW 15 billion in Bitcoin mining equipment and the launch of full mining operations this month. The first phase is expected to produce more than 7 BTC per month and more than 80 BTC per year.
AI and HPC become a larger part of the mining story
Galaxy Digital completed the first phase of power delivery at its Helios campus in West Texas, handing over 133 MW of critical IT load to AI cloud company CoreWeave. Helios was previously one of the larger Bitcoin mining sites in North America. Galaxy acquired it in 2022 and has been converting it into an AI and HPC data center campus. Under a 15-year lease, CoreWeave has committed to use 526 MW of critical IT load across three phases at Helios, a setup expected to bring Galaxy more than $1 billion in average annual revenue.
Keel Infrastructure (NASDAQ: KEEL) said its data center project in Sherbrooke, Quebec, has moved forward. The company has received local government approval, signed an agreement with Hydro-Sherbrooke to transfer and operate 96 MW of existing power capacity, and executed a related land purchase agreement. Keel said it will consolidate power resources from three Bitcoin mining sites into a single 96 MW campus and has received approval to reclassify that power use from Bitcoin mining to HPC and AI data center operations. The project still requires approval from Quebec's Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy.
LM Funding America said it will change its name to PowerCompute Inc. on July 22, and its ticker will switch from LMFA to PWCM. The company said the rebrand reflects a business focus on HPC and AI infrastructure. It plans to expand those operations using 26 MW of owned operating power infrastructure across two sites in Oklahoma and Mississippi. Its Bitcoin reserves, mining operations, and specialty finance business serving nonprofit community associations in Florida will remain in place.
Anue reported that Yang Zuoxing, founder of WhatsMiner and chairman of ShenZhen Yanjimicro Electronics, said during the MoneyFrontier 2026 New Infrastructure Intelligent Computing Summit that Bitcoin miners entering the AI compute market should focus on inference capacity. He said training workloads offer fewer openings because GPU costs are high and market concentration is rising. In his view, the golden era of Bitcoin mining has passed, with gross margins in the mining machine sector falling from 80% to 90% in 2017 to 20% to 30% in 2025. He also said the sector will face more competition from AI for capital and power resources.
Yang said mining can still exist for the long term, and pointed to several directions with potential: natural gas generation, using mining machines to balance power loads when AI data centers operate below peak demand, and combining mining with solar, energy storage and dynamic power adjustment.
The Energy Mag reported that Fortitude Mining, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, signed procurement agreements worth about $45 million for miners and Nebraska infrastructure as it pushes vertical integration in Zcash mining. The expansion includes a $31.5 million miner purchase commitment and two acquisitions totaling $13.9 million involving power contracts, land, buildings and mining equipment. The company said those steps will lift the data center capacity it controls to more than 60 MW in 2026.
Decrypt separately reported that DCG-owned Zcash miner Fortitude has energized a 12 MW mining facility in Nebraska, its first self-built site. The launch lifts its power capacity to more than 60 MW across seven sites. Fortitude said that with power priced around $0.045 per kilowatt-hour and newer-generation miners, the site could lower direct cash mining cost per Zcash coin from about $70 to about $40. The company is also advancing a merger with Nasdaq-listed HeartSciences as part of a plan to become publicly traded.
Bankruptcy, courts and financing moves reshape the sector
The Energy Mag reported that well-known Bitcoin mining pool Poolin and two affiliated U.S. companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New Jersey. They also plan to sell two West Texas mining sites with a combined minimum price of $52 million. Court filings show total liabilities of about $173 million, including roughly $164 million in debt certificates issued to Poolin Wallet users after withdrawals were suspended in 2022. Final recovery rates will depend on the outcome of the asset auction and court approval.
In Moscow, a court moved BitRiver founder Igor Runets from house arrest to a detention facility for at least two months. He is accused of defrauding an En+ affiliated company of nearly RUB 1 billion in mining equipment supply deals. Neither Runets nor BitRiver had responded at the time of the report. Bits Media said BitRiver's parent company had previously entered bankruptcy observation proceedings over debt exceeding $9.2 million.
Bloomberg reported that New Hampshire's Executive Council rejected a Bitcoin-backed municipal bond proposal and declined to approve a plan by the state's Business Finance Authority to issue $100 million of taxable municipal bonds through a private placement. Under the proposal, Bitcoin miner CleanSpark would have borrowed the proceeds and posted $175 million in Bitcoin as collateral. A drop in collateral value below $140 million would have triggered liquidation. The bond principal and interest would have been fully covered by the Bitcoin collateral, with no public or taxpayer funds involved. Opponents said the plan did not deliver direct infrastructure benefits to the state and that the government should not endorse financing tied to volatile crypto assets.
CoinShares said it launched a UCITS fund platform, entering the European UCITS market, which had net assets of EUR 26.3 trillion as of April 2026. The target investor base includes pensions, insurance platforms and private banks. The platform's first product, the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining UCITS ETF, began trading on Deutsche Boerse Xetra on July 21 under the ticker MINE. The fund invests mainly in publicly listed global Bitcoin mining companies and does not directly hold Bitcoin. CoinShares said more digital asset and thematic strategies are planned for the platform.
Policy and regional regulation continue to matter
The Energy Mag reported preliminary data cited by Alexander Neumueller, head of research at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, at an energy investors forum. The figures showed annualized electricity use in Bitcoin mining rising from 138 TWh to about 190 TWh between June 2024 and December 2025, an increase of about 38%. Over the same period, greenhouse gas emissions rose from about 40 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent to 48 million metric tons, up about 20%. Low-carbon energy's share of mining power use climbed from 52.4% to 59.4%, with hydropower overtaking natural gas as the largest single energy source.
Cointelegraph reported that Uzbekistan has formally launched Besqala Mining Valley, described as the country's first tax-exempt crypto mining zone. The site offers tax exemptions through 2035, while also charging miners a 1% revenue fee and applying double electricity tariffs.
Cointelegraph also reported that Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a decree to accelerate development of the country's digital asset market. According to the Ministry of AI and Digital Development, the measures include building cross-border settlement mechanisms for digital assets and stablecoins, steering crypto activity back toward licensed domestic platforms, studying personal income tax preferences for compliant digital asset businesses, and allowing the use of associated gas and oil-and-gas resources for power generation to support Bitcoin mining. The decree also calls for tokenized financial products and national digital asset trading infrastructure.
Malaysia's Deputy Home Minister Shamsul Anuar told parliament that authorities seized more than 75,000 crypto mining machines and arrested 629 people in over 3,000 nationwide raids between 2022 and May 2026. The operations were carried out by the police, Tenaga Nasional Berhad and local authorities, targeting illegal mining linked to unauthorized grid connections, meter tampering, interference with power systems or unlicensed operations. Shamsul Anuar said Malaysia allows the holding and trading of cryptocurrencies but does not recognize them as legal tender.
Mining pool and protocol updates
Bitcoin mining pool OCEAN said it upgraded its backend to handle a possible chain split tied to BIP 110. If a fork occurs, DATUM miners will automatically continue mining on the chain recognized by their own nodes, while OCEAN will track and settle rewards on each respective chain, effectively operating two pools from the fork point onward. The related terms of service are set to be updated before block height 961632, provided the forked chain continues to run and remains within those terms.
OCEAN co-founder Mark Artymko said SBI Crypto will shut down its mining pool service on July 31. He thanked the SBI Crypto team for providing stable service to the Bitcoin network over the years and invited SBI Crypto miners to migrate directly to OCEAN without a complicated account-opening process.
Bitcoin News reported that a solo miner using a single-chip Bitaxe ASIC machine with roughly 1 TH/s of hashrate mined Bitcoin block 957382 and took the full 3.1382 BTC block subsidy and transaction fees, worth about $200,000. At 1 TH/s, the average probability of finding a block is roughly once every 16,000 years, making the event exceptionally rare.