21 Capital CEO: Bitcoin Is Experiencing Its First-Ever Hashrate Bear Market

[sergiorus]

Twenty One Capital CEO: Bitcoin Is Experiencing Its First-Ever Hashrate Bear Market; Nearly All Miners Are Moving From Bitcoin Mining to AI

Tether-backed Bitcoin treasury company Twenty One Capital CEO Rapha Zagury said at Bitcoin Asia 2026 that Bitcoin is experiencing its first-ever “hashrate bear market.” Bitcoin’s network hashrate approached 1.3 ZH/s at the end of last year before declining steadily, marking the longest cycle to date from an all-time high in hashrate to recovery.

Zagury said the current situation differs from the hashrate decline following China’s 2021 crypto mining ban, when miners mainly relocated to other regions and gradually recovered. Bitcoin mining now also faces new infrastructure allocation options such as AI and HPC. He said nearly all publicly listed mining companies are moving away from pure large-scale Bitcoin mining and shifting toward AI.

Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2070457/000121390026095339/ea030397801ex99-1.htm



What do you guys this? Is this trend here to stay or the suits are just FUDing at the start of the bull market?

[Ambatman]

I believe this is over blown out of proportion
https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/hash-rate
The machine or hardware  needed for AI and that of Bitcoin mining are different
What's similar are the electricity grids.
Bitcoin uses ASIC while AI uses GPU
So for anyone that's venturing into AI
They might have to sell their machines to another miner
Which just change ownership and hashrate isn't affected much.

Hashrate are sometimes higher when we bulling and lower when we bearing
And even if hash falls slow
Difficulty adjustment exists that could in bullish cases  make existing miners relatively more profitable.

[MusaMohamed]

Twenty One Capital CEO: Bitcoin Is Experiencing Its First-Ever Hashrate Bear Market; Nearly All Miners Are Moving From Bitcoin Mining to AI

Nearly all miners are moving to AI, it's not true.

This chart shows that Bitcoin hash rate has never always upward without times of "corrections" with considerable falls.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html#alltime
https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/bitcoin-hashrate-chart/

It can be because of bear market, fuds, china crack down on mining, and other things such as attraction from AI recent months. In a long run, there will be new Bitcoin miners, new hash rates and the hashrate chart will be up again.

[OgNasty]

There is no way that Bitcoin's price could continue keeping up with the explosive hashrate growth that Bitcoin has seen.  At some point there had to be a slowing of hashrate.  Otherwise, we would see Bitcoin pump to levels that would destroy new investors.  I am actually glad that we're seeing hashrate slow, as it shows the market is showing some foresight and not just piling in investment anymore.  This is likely due to the AI boom, but still, it is nice that the mining market isn't getting out of hand.

[MusaMohamed]

There is no way that Bitcoin's price could continue keeping up with the explosive hashrate growth that Bitcoin has seen.  At some point there had to be a slowing of hashrate.

Bitcoin price, marketcap, and hashrate will be slow down in their growth because realistically Bitcoin ROIs for years and cycles will become smaller compares to past years and cycles. It makes Bitcoin less attractive to new miners but there will still be new people who see opportunities and join Bitcoin mining industry.

Otherwise, we would see Bitcoin pump to levels that would destroy new investors.

Destroying new investors?
People who are outsiders, then new investors always feel like Bitcoin price is too expensive and can destroy them, but in long run, if they actually determinant invested money in Bitcoin, held it a long time, they won.

I am actually glad that we're seeing hashrate slow, as it shows the market is showing some foresight and not just piling in investment anymore.  This is likely due to the AI boom, but still, it is nice that the mining market isn't getting out of hand.

AI booms but it will be cooled down some times in the future, while Bitcoin can be affected in short term and mid term but in long term, it will continue its solid growth in both hashrate, difficulty, adoption, and market growth. AI won't change or destroy the Bitcoin growth in long term in many aspects.

[Faisal2202]

I believe this is over blown out of proportion
https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/hash-rate
The machine or hardware  needed for AI and that of Bitcoin mining are different
What's similar are the electricity grids.
Bitcoin uses ASIC while AI uses GPU
So for anyone that's venturing into AI
They might have to sell their machines to another miner
Which just change ownership and hashrate isn't affected much.

Hashrate are sometimes higher when we bulling and lower when we bearing
And even if hash falls slow
Difficulty adjustment exists that could in bullish cases  make existing miners relatively more profitable.

You have shared a point no one usually thinks of. They sell their equipment to start AI data centres, but we know the infrastructure of a mining farm is nothing compared to an AI setup. They need a lot of things, like a closed-loop liquid cooling system and a good internet connection, but most of all, what these miners have sold is the electricity that they have.

I was searching for how it can be cost effective for the companies that have left BTC mining in the last 8 months, like HIVE, Core Scientific, etc. Because the cost must be high in setting up AI setups, so I learned they don't even buy GPUs. There is a company called CoreWeave which buys the GPUs, and they pay Core Scientific billions just to use their centres and power infrastructure. So one person is buying the GPUs, and the one who is shutting down their BTC miners can reroute their energy to the AI setups.

HIVE, on the other hand, is lending the compute power to pay the debt they took to secure GPUs. But I was seeing some developments in this field that are still underrated, but I don't know what if the GPU and power consumption needed for these AI systems is not actually needed at all. Like, let's say an 8B model needs a lot of RAM, minimum 8GB to 16GB of RAM. I know it is different from data centres, but the computation is almost the same.

There is a project named "Soup CLI". If anyone involved with tuning AI models could shed some light, but the documentation I read and videos I watched suggest it can reduce the memory consumption by half, by splitting things, in short.

So, I was thinking, we as non technical people, who don't know how much actual power and computation these AIs need, maybe they don't need that much at all. What if smarter people like the founder of Soup, who is just a kid in Kazakhstan maybe or somewhere from this region, made something like this that could actually help in saving billions? Then what?

The point is, the demand for Ai could also eventually decrease. They just need improvements.

[Antidote47k]

In my view, I think the interesting part is what they are actually taking away from mining. The ASICs could eventually be sold to another miner, so that hashrate doesn’t disappear permanently, what may be tedious to replace is the power infrastructure, land and grid capacity which is now being diverted to AI/HPC.
This is also quite different from the china shutdown of 2021, where there was some mining capacity displaced geographically that came back online, this time there are some infrastructures which have a useful alternative to be diverted to and potentially provide more stable economics.

Again, difficulty adjustment would help miners who remain by lowering the competition for the same block rewards, but would AI create a persistent opportunity cost for mining long term? If it does pay more relative to same power and infrastructure, miners would need BTC price to rise substantially for some of that capacity to come back.

[Cryptomultiplier]

There is no way that Bitcoin's price could continue keeping up with the explosive hashrate growth that Bitcoin has seen.  At some point there had to be a slowing of hashrate.  Otherwise, we would see Bitcoin pump to levels that would destroy new investors.  I am actually glad that we're seeing hashrate slow, as it shows the market is showing some foresight and not just piling in investment anymore.  This is likely due to the AI boom, but still, it is nice that the mining market isn't getting out of hand.

This is more of a structural shift because it is clear that there's a split in the mining industry into AI and Bitcoin, where we see large mining companies divert into AI because they are sure of the fixed profit margin they are getting, while the retail or small-time miners remain on board the Bitcoin system and get twice the amount they received for doing their job and remain in tact because bigger miners left and the Bitcoin system still has to function still.

[PrivacyG]

Keep in mind that while Miners are important to Bitcoin, the Hash rate does not necessarily show how people generally see Bitcoin.  The Hash rate can change for many reasons.  After all, the largest Mining Farms are not out there to particularly support Bitcoin but to make money.  If 'AI' or any other domain becomes 'the trend' and more money can be made out of it, some of them will definitely move to what makes them more.

It is just my theory.  Business is business, particularly when millions of Dollars are involved.

[cr1776]

Twenty One Capital CEO: Bitcoin Is Experiencing Its First-Ever Hashrate Bear Market; Nearly All Miners Are Moving From Bitcoin Mining to AI

Tether-backed Bitcoin treasury company Twenty One Capital CEO Rapha Zagury said at Bitcoin Asia 2026 that Bitcoin is experiencing its first-ever “hashrate bear market.” Bitcoin’s network hashrate approached 1.3 ZH/s at the end of last year before declining steadily, marking the longest cycle to date from an all-time high in hashrate to recovery.

Zagury said the current situation differs from the hashrate decline following China’s 2021 crypto mining ban, when miners mainly relocated to other regions and gradually recovered. Bitcoin mining now also faces new infrastructure allocation options such as AI and HPC. He said nearly all publicly listed mining companies are moving away from pure large-scale Bitcoin mining and shifting toward AI.

Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2070457/000121390026095339/ea030397801ex99-1.htm



What do you guys this? Is this trend here to stay or the suits are just FUDing at the start of the bull market?

FUD.  Talking their own book.  IMHO.

[Z-tight]

It is hard to deny that this is happening and yeah, some BTC mining companies are actually channeling their power towards the AI and HPC network. I am not sure it is at a level of calling it a 'hashrate bear market', because some of these companies are not 100% moving away from BTC mining and they intend to run the both of them.

Mining companies are just like every other one out there, they would choose what generates more revenue for them. We must also consider that BTC mining profit is volatile, so they would also be interested in more stable income. The question is, how far-reaching would the implications be, does anyone believe this would give smaller miners a chance to thrive in the long run?

[X-ray]

Hashrate has reached all time high in October 2025 and having a drop is normal, and yet despite the drop the current hashrate is still higher than Q1 of 2025.

The CEO is speaking some bs and may have hidden agenda.

I personally think that the 21 Capital CEO is insisting on turning their mining farm into AI inference farm to chase higher stock valuation.

On another note, shouldn't the hashrate going down be beneficial for them?

[d5000]

I think to really understand the situation one doesn't have to take into account only the current AI bubble, but also the mining bubble of the early 2020s.

Mining companies got a lot of new capital in the last years, many having listed as public companies and having created a bit of buzz. It was already talked about in this forum years ago that this level of hashrate wasn't sustainable, with the exception of an explosive price growth (e.g. if we'd be at $200,000 now and not at $7x,000 ...). And yes, if the Bitcoin revenue alone is declining a bit, then they have to try to use their infrastructure for other means.

Thus talking about a "hashrate bear market" is not FUD. It's the reality. But in my opinion it's a healthy correction. Bitcoin is extremely safe, and would still be so if hashrate was half of the current value. Until now, we have only lost 20% from the peak, and hashrate still is higher than in early 2025 (when the BTC price was higher than now).

PS: Perhaps this is also the reason why we don't see that much "climate FUD" this year. They shifted their criticism towards AI (understandably). In some estimations, AI electricity consumption has already surpassed the electricity mining has consumed in Bitcoin's entire history (since 2009).

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Mining companies got a lot of new capital in the last years, many having listed as public companies and having created a bit of buzz. It was already talked about in this forum years ago that this level of hashrate wasn't sustainable, with the exception of an explosive price growth (e.g. if we'd be at $200,000 now and not at $7x,000 ...). And yes, if the Bitcoin revenue alone is declining a bit, then they have to try to use their infrastructure for other means.

Thus talking about a "hashrate bear market" is not FUD. It's the reality. But in my opinion it's a healthy correction.

Mining companies have their equipment with computational power that can be used for mining Bitcoin blocks, get bitcoins, or to work for AI companies. As business, they must find the best ways to work and get positive revenue, then profit for their companies. This is what they are doing recent months but it will be also reason why they will shift their equipment back to mine Bitcoin blocks. Again, motivation is money and I believe that in long term, mining and holding bitcoin will be very great profitable business.

PS: Perhaps this is also the reason why we don't see that much "climate FUD" this year. They shifted their criticism towards AI (understandably). In some estimations, AI electricity consumption has already surpassed the electricity mining has consumed in Bitcoin's entire history (since 2009).

Such energy and climatic FUD will return, so meanwhile if anyone have yet known, they can learn and prepare their knowledge for debunk such FUDs.
https://endthefud.org/energy
Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument.
https://casebitcoin.com/critiques/bitcoin-wastes-energy

[Dogedegen]

Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2070457/000121390026095339/ea030397801ex99-1.htm

What do you guys this? Is this trend here to stay or the suits are just FUDing at the start of the bull market?

In this post we see a combination of truth and misleading information that does not accurately depict the situation because it tries to present a specific narrative. The Bitcoin hashrate has been experiencing different periods of decline and they have had different duration. If you see claims like this you need to ask yourself who is making the claim, what are their incentives and do they get to benefit from such a situation? This quote here is more like an investment statement, it is not a research report that is based on science that would consider many perspectives with a good methodology. Also you need to remember that Bitcoin's hashrate does not need to have infinite growth all the time, this is not possible for many reasons but endless growth of anything is not possible.

I think to really understand the situation one doesn't have to take into account only the current AI bubble, but also the mining bubble of the early 2020s.

Mining companies got a lot of new capital in the last years, many having listed as public companies and having created a bit of buzz. It was already talked about in this forum years ago that this level of hashrate wasn't sustainable, with the exception of an explosive price growth (e.g. if we'd be at $200,000 now and not at $7x,000 ...). And yes, if the Bitcoin revenue alone is declining a bit, then they have to try to use their infrastructure for other means.

Thus talking about a "hashrate bear market" is not FUD. It's the reality. But in my opinion it's a healthy correction. Bitcoin is extremely safe, and would still be so if hashrate was half of the current value. Until now, we have only lost 20% from the peak, and hashrate still is higher than in early 2025 (when the BTC price was higher than now).

PS: Perhaps this is also the reason why we don't see that much "climate FUD" this year. They shifted their criticism towards AI (understandably). In some estimations, AI electricity consumption has already surpassed the electricity mining has consumed in Bitcoin's entire history (since 2009).

It is true that it is a decline, but check who this person is and what his business is doing. He's also in the business of acquiring mining infrastructure, so this kind of statement is more an investment claim that helps him align with his pockets. You can find some at this link https://investors.xxi.money/news/news-details/2026/Twenty-One-Capital-Outlines-Operating-Plans-to-Build-the-Bitcoin-Company/default.aspx.

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Twenty One Capital, Inc. (“Twenty One”), a Bitcoin-native company, today provided an overview of its operating strategy centered on potential acquisitions of Strike, a leading Bitcoin financial services company, and Elektron, a large-scale global Bitcoin mining platform. The strategy is structured around consolidation, incorporating mergers and acquisitions, and is intended to bring together Bitcoin treasury, mining, financial services, and capital markets into a single platform.

The strategy is about consolidation and to create a bit of negative talk about the infrastructure and that everyone is leaving goes right into the strategy and helps him build the company as a leader in the field. The companies are changing direction to chase the hype around AI is not anything unusual, we have seen this happen with companies from all kinds of industries so why would Bitcoin mining be different? There was even a shoe company or something that changed to AI recently. 

[stompix]

Thus talking about a "hashrate bear market" is not FUD. It's the reality. But in my opinion it's a healthy correction. Bitcoin is extremely safe, and would still be so if hashrate was half of the current value. Until now, we have only lost 20% from the peak, and hashrate still is higher than in early 2025 (when the BTC price was higher than now).

Hashrate alone, earning per th/s, price of miners,....all of them are meaningless alone.
Back in 2016, the whole network was 1exahash, is the network 800 times more secure? Nope, because the price of a tH/s then is not the price of a th/s now. Does it consume 800 more energy?
Nope again! When I was forced out of the mining race, the average gear mining was 30j/th, now the best one pushes below 10j/th basically with the same electricity consumption as back then you have 3x the hashrate, so.....you get te point

The only thing that caps everything- hahsrate, electricity consumption is the BTC price!
And the price...well...

FUD.

Yeah, FUD, aka things I don't like so they must be false!

[pooya87]

Bitcoin’s network hashrate approached 1.3 ZH/s at the end of last year before declining steadily, marking the longest cycle to date from an all-time high in hashrate to recovery.

Back in high school I remember our biology teacher gave a good example of how a badly designed science experiment can give you false results. It was about medieval times IIRC when they wanted to figure out where do rats come from and their assumption was that rats are created out of dirty rags. So they designed the experiment to throw some dirty rags in a corner and then go away to come back a while later. And when they did, they saw rats out and about so they concluded that their assumption (rats are born out of dirty rags) was correct!

Hundreds of years later people are still making the same mistake. They had an assumption (miners are moving to AI) and then they found proof for their assumption!

But if we look at all the data like the price chart, we can see a very different picture. Just place the price and hashrate chart on top of each other.
Last year when hashrate was rising, the price was soaring as well. Price broke all the records and went above $100k and kept on rising to set the ATH of $120k+. So obviously hashrate grew because the income of mining was rising rapidly.
Ever since then, the price has been dropping and it nearly halved. So obviously because the profitability of mining decreased, the hashrate decreased as well. By the way despite price dropping >50% the hashrate only dropped about 25%-30%.

That's not a new behavior. This has always been how the hashrate moved. That is how bitcoin is designed.

Zagury said the current situation differs from the hashrate decline following China’s 2021 crypto mining ban, when miners mainly relocated to other regions and gradually recovered. Bitcoin mining now also faces new infrastructure allocation options such as AI and HPC. He said nearly all publicly listed mining companies are moving away from pure large-scale Bitcoin mining and shifting toward AI.

If they are moving, then hashrate charts don't show this yet. As I said the fluctuations have been normal as always in accordance with the price fluctuations.

So I'll call this a guess until proven otherwise.

[tbct_mt2]

Hundreds of years later people are still making the same mistake. They had an assumption (miners are moving to AI) and then they found proof for their assumption!

They thought that AI is the reason, and they believed it is the reason why they have no null hypothesis to do any data collection, research for either proving the null hypothesis or reject it.

But if we look at all the data like the price chart, we can see a very different picture. Just place the price and hashrate chart on top of each other.
Last year when hashrate was rising, the price was soaring as well. Price broke all the records and went above $100k and kept on rising to set the ATH of $120k+. So obviously hashrate grew because the income of mining was rising rapidly.
Ever since then, the price has been dropping and it nearly halved. So obviously because the profitability of mining decreased, the hashrate decreased as well. By the way despite price dropping >50% the hashrate only dropped about 25%-30%.

That's not a new behavior. This has always been how the hashrate moved. That is how bitcoin is designed.

It's in fact not a new behavior of Bitcoin miners and it's easily to guess that Bitcoin miners get more profit in a bull market, worse profit, even loss in a bear market, so they are more crowded in Bitcoin mining industry with their mining hashrate during a bull market than during a boring and likely unprofitable bear market.

They join for profit, leave because of lack of profit, so they will rejoin again because of profit.

Many new Bitcoin miners in the last market cycle will soon realize that if they maintain mining during a bear market, holding their coins till a next bull market, they will have very great profit. It's how investment in long term can bring profit from gradual and disciplined accumulation during bear market. Miners don't have to buy bitcoins, they have to mine bitcoins and accumulate coins this way.

[joniboini]

Many new Bitcoin miners in the last market cycle will soon realize that if they maintain mining during a bear market, holding their coins till a next bull market, they will have very great profit.

Maybe it's not sustainable for them to begin with. I think most of them are aware that holding their coins for a year or two will probably get them higher returns compared to selling now. But if it can't cover existing costs and whatnot, maybe they don't have that "luxury". Not sure how those mining companies structures their shares, but I bet the biggest reason they move away to another business is simply because they need the profit quickly.

[buwaytress]

Hadn't even paid attention to hashrate for a while but not really surprised. Not sure it's a hashrate bear market though, just a crossover of events and the FUD jumping on (someone somewhere in 21C had to come up with something and this is what the intern discovered, well done).

All of this has happened before, all of it will happen again. You know.