Bitcoin price below production cost splits miners

Bitcoin is trading just above $60,000 while the network’s estimated all-in cost to produce one coin is about $84,300. The gap has left many miners unprofitable on a full-cost basis and driven a range of operational responses across the industry.

In mid-June the network difficulty fell 10.09%, from 138.96 trillion to 124.93 trillion. An epoch extended to 15.6 days instead of the 14-day target after many older, higher-cost machines went offline. The protocol’s automatic difficulty reduction followed as block production slowed.

Daily revenue per unit of computing power, known as hashprice, fell with the price move. Hashprice peaked near $63 per petahash per day in July 2025, dropped into the high $20s by early June 2026 and recovered above $30 after the June difficulty cut.

A Q1 2026 report from a sector researcher put the weighted average cash cost for public miners at roughly $79,995 in Q4 2025 and estimated 15% to 20% of the global fleet would be underwater once power costs were included. Operators with modern rigs and sub-5-cent power remain profitable at lower prices, while older machines on 6-to-7-cent power run at a loss.

When revenue per hash falls, marginal operators typically sell bitcoin, power down rigs, delay expansion, renegotiate power contracts or raise capital. As higher-cost hash rate leaves the network, difficulty adjusts downward and remaining miners capture a larger share of block rewards.

Public companies have reduced their bitcoin treasuries by more than 15,000 BTC from peak levels in recent months. Core Scientific sold about 1,900 coins in January and has indicated plans to sell more. Bitdeer reduced its balance to zero in February, and Riot sold 1,818 coins in December. Public miners shed more BTC in the first quarter of 2026 than they did across all of 2025.

Several large infrastructure firms have announced contracts to provide computing for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing customers. Public firms have disclosed more than $70 billion in cumulative AI and HPC contracts. Notable agreements include a $10.2 billion, 12-year arrangement between two infrastructure firms, $12.8 billion in contracted HPC revenue reported by another company, and a $7 billion, 15-year AI infrastructure lease from a third operator.

Some companies are funding that shift with debt. One firm issued $1.7 billion in senior secured notes; that financing raised its quarterly interest expense to $33.4 million. An industry estimate projects listed miners’ revenue from AI could rise from roughly 30% today to as much as 70% by the end of 2026.

The public sector now divides into groups: operators with signed AI contracts and visible revenue streams; firms with frameworks or pilots that have not produced significant income; and pure-play miners dependent on bitcoin price, hashprice and treasury policy. Market valuations are beginning to reflect contract risk and execution differences among these types of firms.

Network security measures have not failed during the price decline. Block times that slowed in mid-June have returned near the 10-minute target as some curtailed capacity came back online with price stabilization. Key metrics to monitor going forward include hashprice, the cadence of difficulty adjustments, public-miner treasury balances and the volume of coins those miners send to exchanges.