Bitcoin has fallen to around $76,000, with a drop of more than 40% from its high point. To ordinary observers, this is just a routine adjustment, but for Bitcoin miners, plummeting prices, high network difficulty, and rising energy costs have formed a perfect storm, and they are facing a severe existential crisis.

CryptoQuant data shows that the miners' profit and loss sustainability index plummeted to 21, the lowest since the end of 2024. Financial pressure has caused Bitcoin's total computing power to fall by 12% since November last year, the largest decline since Asia banned mining in 2021, and network computing power dropped to the lowest since September 2025.

Miners’ profits have fallen to historical freezing points. F2pool data shows that with a Bitcoin price of US$76,176, a computing power of 890EH/s, and an electricity cost of US$0.06/kWh, miners’ daily income per terahash is only US$0.034, and the computing power price has dropped to a record low of US$34 per PH/s.

Reflected on specific mining machines, the power cost rate of old and inefficient mining machines reaches 109%-162%, and they have fallen into losses without deducting additional expenses.

The cost rate of mid-generation mining machines is close to 100%, and even the latest mining machines have a cost rate of 52%, which means the profit margins are extremely compressed.

But unlike previous crypto winters, this time miners have a new "escape hatch" and AI infrastructure transformation.

The infrastructure required for Bitcoin mining, such as electricity and grid connection, exactly meets the needs of ultra-large-scale AI computing, and the willingness to pay in the AI field is higher.

CoreWeave transformed from mining to AI cloud services and received a US$2 billion investment from NVIDIA; Canadian miner Hut 8 signed a US$7 billion 15-year AI data center lease agreement.

This type of transformation allows miners to escape the fluctuations in Bitcoin income and lock in long-term profits, but it also causes some computing power to be permanently diverted, rather than temporarily shutting down and waiting for prices to recover.

Howeverthe loss of computing power is posing a potential threat to the security of the Bitcoin network. At present, the absolute security of Bitcoin is still extremely high, but the continued decline in computing power will reduce the marginal cost of attacks and reduce the resources required to gain control of the network.

At the same time, the withdrawal of inefficient miners will lead to the concentration of computing power and increase network vulnerability.

CryptoQuant reminds that a large number of industrial computing power is currently in a state of meager profit or loss. This indicator can forward-lookingly reflect the robustness of network security budgets relative to other power uses.

The miners’ dilemma may give rise to three development paths in the future:

The first is industry consolidation, with efficient computing power occupying a larger share and computing power growth slowing down but maintaining a safe level;

The second is to accelerate the transformation to a fee-driven security mechanism and rely on transaction fees to maintain miner incentives;

The third is to introduce an external guarantee mechanism and provide targeted support from institutions.

The core contradiction is thatthe industry needs to weigh the gap between the cost of retaining hash power and the returns in the AI field in energy competition, which will ultimately determine the future direction of the Bitcoin mining market.