📰 Key Takeaways

The seven-day average of Bitcoin’s network hashrate has climbed back above 1 ZH per second (1,000 EH/s), its highest level in seven months since March 3. BlocksBridge Consulting says in its latest Miner Weekly newsletter that even though several public miners are shifting capacity to AI, competition among miners hasn’t eased, which suggests other operators have filled in the hashrate being pulled out.

Mining difficulty rose 5.92% on October 16, and BlocksBridge expects the next adjustment to add another 5.16%. If that happens, the two adjustments together would add up to roughly 11.4%. The firm put it bluntly: this is “not the breathing room miners still on the network were hoping for.”

The AI pivot has definitely taken a lot of hashrate offline. BlocksBridge previously estimated that public miners’ actual hashrate fell 23%, while their AI and high-performance computing revenue grew 52% quarter over quarter, with the freed-up capacity representing about $1.5 billion worth of mining hardware.

Smaller miners may be filling the gap. They’re buying secondhand equipment from the big players, and BlocksBridge points to Sazmining as an example: the company sells used Antminer S21 XP rigs, and buyers can host them at facilities in Paraguay and Texas. For miners with cheap electricity, buying used machines may beat investing in new ones, and it also means hardware pushed out by the AI pivot can keep mining Bitcoin somewhere else. That said, it’s still unclear how many of these machines came from public miners and how many have already been plugged back into the network.

Other observers see rising hashrate as an “indirect bullish signal” for Bitcoin. CryptoQuant founder and CEO Ki Young Ju said on X that higher hashrate means stronger security, and better fundamentals for Bitcoin as a store of value.

💬 JudyAI Lab Take

Bitcoin’s seven-day average hashrate is back above 1 ZH per second, a seven-month high, and mining competition hasn’t cooled even as several public miners shift capacity to AI. That’s worth a look if you follow AI.

What this story really shows is compute being reallocated between uses. Public miners’ actual hashrate fell 23% while their AI and HPC revenue grew 52% quarter over quarter, which means the same hardware and power infrastructure can create more value in AI. But the hashrate didn’t just disappear. Smaller miners bought used Antminer S21 XP rigs, took over the retired machines, and kept mining, so the gap closed fast. For AI builders, the lesson is that the value of compute depends on who can use it most cost-effectively: people with cheap electricity can make money with older gear, while larger operators with plenty of resources move to higher-return use cases. Demand for compute isn’t zero-sum either. This market looks more like players with different cost structures each finding their own spot.

When you plan your next AI project, start by mapping out your compute cost structure. Figure out which jobs can run on cheaper, older resources, and which ones actually justify high-end compute.

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