After a summer decline in bitcoin mining activity, operators redirected capacity to artificial intelligence tasks and then returned to btc production as prices improved.

Hashrate trends

Industry aggregate power stood near 980 EH/s at the end of June 2026 and fell below 850 EH/s by 31.08.2026, a contraction observers have called the "2026 hashrate bear market". With bitcoin prices firming in August, mining rigs were reassigned back to block production, and by 01.10.2026 the network hashrate had risen to about 1010 EH/s, representing a 2.26% increase over the prior 90 days.

Mining difficulty and schedule

Network difficulty declined from 133.87 T in June to 125.81 T in August, then recovered to 132.76 T by 30.09.2026. A subsequent adjustment projected for 03.10.2026 is expected around 134.08 T, roughly another 1% increase on the current level.

Pool concentration

Around seven tenths of the network's computing power is now concentrated in four pools, with market shares reported as Foundry at 24.7%, AntPool at 21.3%, F2Pool at 15.6% and ViaBTC at 9.4%. Foundry is owned by Digital Currency Group, while AntPool is associated with the miner manufacturer Bitmain.

Economic drivers

Operators have been shifting capacity to whichever workload yields higher returns; during summer AI tasks were more profitable, but autumn returns from bitcoin mining improved and prompted a redeployment of equipment back to the blockchain network.

Despite the network's decentralized design, a relatively small set of large pools continues to account for the majority of hashing power, shaping short-term resilience and concentration dynamics.