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Bitcoin miners have run into a paradoxical crisis - the coin itself is expensive, but making money from mining it has become harder than ever. While BTC holds in the $60,000–$65,000 range, companies' revenues from processing transactions have unexpectedly collapsed to 2019 levels.
This financial dead end has triggered a massive tectonic shift, and miners are now mothballing farms, selling cryptocurrency reserves and urgently moving into the artificial intelligence industry.
This anomaly of summer 2026 was clearly described by Charles Edwards, founder of Capriole Investments. According to his calculations, the annual amount of transaction fees on the Bitcoin network has fallen to a modest $96 million–$114 million.
The whole paradox is that in 2019, when fee revenues were at the same level, Bitcoin was worth just $5,000. Today, the coin's price is 13 times higher, the network's market capitalization exceeds $1.2 trillion, yet miners receive the same amount of money for processing transactions.
After the recent halving, the share of fees in their revenue fell below 10%. With the current mining cost at around $62,650, the business's net margin has shrunk to a critical 5%. Simply put, mining on older equipment has become unprofitable.
The Canaan precedent
However, instead of going bankrupt, publicly traded mining companies have found a gold mine in high-performance computing (HPC) and AI, signing multibillion-dollar contracts one after another with IT giants such as Microsoft and Nvidia.
For miners, this is an ideal hedge: instead of relying on unstable Bitcoin revenues that decline every four years, they receive fixed, guaranteed dollar payments from leaders of the technology sector.
The extent of the pressure on the cryptomining industry is demonstrated by the precedent of giant Canaan Inc. (CAN), which is monetizing part of its reserves to launch a $30 million share buyback program. Canaan currently holds 1,915 BTC and 3,952 ETH on its balance sheet, worth around $130 million in total.
This is an emergency measure, and Canaan has only until January 2027 to restore regulatory confidence and avoid delisting. Signals of liquidity realization and BTC transfers to custody addresses to cover operating expenses are also coming from other heavyweights, including MARA and Riot.
What will happen to Bitcoin's security?
The mass repurposing of computing capacity toward AI raises an obvious question for the industry: who will secure the Bitcoin network in the future? If transaction fees do not begin to rise, then as block rewards continue to decline, it may simply become unprofitable for miners to maintain the network.
For now, there is no panic. The network's total hashrate remains near record highs at 837–900 EH/s, while Bitcoin's built-in automatic difficulty adjustment mechanism successfully protects the network from sudden equipment shutdowns.
Nevertheless, the trend is clear: miners are ceasing to be crypto romantics and turning into pragmatic providers of electricity for the AI revolution.
U.Today Editorial Team
Dan Burgin
