04-07-2026 
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The dwindling number of block reward miners working to secure the BTC network is engaging in “treasury” selloffs and major layoffs, and even Congress is growing concerned about the future of this technology.
- Riot selling more BTC than it’s mining, MARA cutting payroll by 15%
- Did Bitfarms pivot to AI or just away from losses?
- Cango execs ante up, but delist threat not going away
- GOP “Mined in America” bill takes aim at dastardly foreign ASICs
- Russian mining struggles through haphazard regulatory approach
As if things weren’t already difficult enough for the ever-thinning herd of BTC miners, the network’s difficulty rate ticked back up last Friday (3), rising nearly 4% to just under 139 trillion hashes (the average number of guesses required to ‘find’ a new block on the network and claim the current 3.125 token block reward).
That difficulty rate is still well off the network’s all-time peak of 156 trillion last November, but any increase puts more pressure on mining’s already dodgy economics. The average all-in cost to mine a single BTC stood at just over $83,000 as of Monday evening, while the token’s price was under $69,000.
So, how much must it suck when corporate miners learn of yet another solo mining win, as occurred on April 2, when a mining minnow boasting a whopping 0.00002% of BTC’s overall hashrate beat the 1-in-28,000 odds and claimed the block reward?
Meanwhile, miners who are in the process of “pivoting to AI” (so, all of them) appear to have abandoned hope that BTC’s fiat price will someday resume what was once considered an unstoppable upward trajectory.
On April 2, Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) announced that it had sold 3,778 BTC in the first quarter of 2026, more than twice the 1,473 tokens Riot produced through mining in Q1. At this point last year, Riot held 19,233 BTC, but this figure currently stands at 15,680. Riot’s selloff generated $289.5 million for the company, adding to the ~$200 million it reaped via its sale of 1,800 BTC late last year.
Last month, Riot reported a net loss of over $633 million in 2025 and CEO Jason Les said the company would continue to “convert power capacity” from BTC to AI in order to “maximize value for our shareholders.” Les hailed Riot’s ongoing evolution “from a Bitcoin mining company with data center potential into a proven data center developer.”
Riot’s recent sales follow former hashrate leader MARA (NASDAQ: MARA) announcing last month that it had sold 15,133 of its formerly 53,822-strong BTC treasury to repurchase ~$1 billion worth of debt (some of which it took on to buy BTC at far higher prices than it’s currently worth).
On April 4, MARA’s VP of investor relations, Robert Samuels, said the sales didn’t represent “capitulation. That’s balance sheet management.” Samuels claimed MARA has “always” viewed BTC as “a corporate asset,” and that hadn’t changed.
But MARA appears to be taking even more drastic steps to improve its bottom line. On April 2, Blockspace reported on an internal MARA memo to staff in which CEO Fred Thiel said that “as part of our broader growth strategy, we made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce our team by approximately 15%.”
Thiel called the downsizing “not purely a financial decision—it’s a strategic one … we’re focusing the company in a new direction. That means the shape of our team needs to change with it.” Blockspace quoted a source saying the cuts “are going deep … there’s a possibility entire teams are just being cut.”
MARA recently announced a joint venture deal with Starwood Digital Ventures that will see MARA convert many of its mining sites into AI/high-performance computing (HPC) data centers. MARA also recently finalized its acquisition of a 64% stake in French data center firm Exaion to accelerate this transition.
MARA investors appeared thrilled by the layoff notice, as its share price shot up from below $8 before April 2’s opening bell to $8.71 by the end of that day’s trading. The shares have so far managed to avoid a reversal of this fortune, closing Monday at $8.85 (+1.6%).
Regardless, the sector-wide AI pivot could have serious ramifications for BTC’s security. The first quarter of 2026 saw the network’s hashrate fall 4% since the year began, marking the first first-quarter hashrate reduction in six years.
However, the bulk of this decline occurred in March, following the start of the U.S. military operation against Iran. Prior to those shots being fired, Iran was believed to account for over 4% of global hashrate, with much of that activity reportedly conducted by the country’s military forces looking to evade U.S. economic sanctions.
Bitfarms/Keel: ‘In time, no Bitcoin.’
Keel Infrastructure, the “infrastructure-first owner and developer for HPC/AI data centers” that until recently was known as Bitfarms (NASDAQ: BITF), has offered us one final look at the dire economics that prompted it to declare in February that “we are no longer a Bitcoin company.”
Despite Bitfarms/Keel’s 2025 revenue rising 72% year-on-year to $229 million, it booked an operating loss of $150 million and a net loss of $284.5 million, the latter figure a tenfold rise on 2024’s losses. The losses included eight-figure charges from the declining value of the BTC the company formerly clutched so tightly to its bosom.
As CEO Ben Gagnon put it in his prepared remarks to analysts, Keel/Bitfarms “made foundational changes to reposition the business and made 100% of our focus on North American HPC infrastructure development. No half measures. No compromises. And in time, no Bitcoin…” Ouch.
As of March 27, 2026, the company still had $161 million worth of “unencumbered” BTC that will be “opportunistically” disposed of in the weeks and months to come. Keel has pledged that its mining ops will be fully wound down before the year is through, after which it will sell its ASIC rigs for whatever it can get to whoever is daft enough to buy them in this current climate.
Cango execs ante up in bid to keep NYSE listing
Another miner furiously pivoting is Cango (NYSE: CANG), despite having only joined the mining circus 16 months ago. Cango once vowed to continually build up its BTC treasury but abruptly pivoted to “sell” mode in February by ditching more than half of its 7,528 tokens. Cango has continued to sell what it mines, pushing its treasury down to 3,313 tokens as of Monday.
Cango’s 2025 report showed a loss of over $572 million, despite revenue rising sevenfold from 2024 to $688 million. So it’s probably no surprise that, in addition to unloading its now unwanted BTC, Cango just executed a $10 million convertible note financing agreement with DL Holdings, a Hong Kong-listed financial services group, with the possibility of an additional $10 million investment down the road. The proceeds will be used to support Cango’s AI/HPC pivot.Cango also announced that it had secured a $65 million “strategic investment from company leadership,” namely, chairman Xin Jin and director Chang-Wei Chiu. The investment news came the same day that Cango revealed that the New York Stock Exchange had informed management that the company “is not in compliance with the NYSE’s price criteria for continued listing standard.” The noncompliance stems from Cango’s share price falling below $1 and staying below $1 for 30 consecutive trading days.
Under NYSE rules, Cango has six months in which to boost its share price above $1 and keep it there for a minimum 30 consecutive trading-day period. Should Cango fail to achieve this benchmark, its shares will be delisted.
Cango’s share price decline has mirrored that of the BTC token, which peaked last October before losing roughly half its value. Around the time that decline began, Cango was trading over $2.40, but the shares haven’t traded above $1 since early February and closed Monday’s trading at just $0.42 (-10.4%). That’s better than the $0.33 they were trading at just before Cango’s ‘investment’ and financing news, but for the year-to-date, Cango shares are down 72%.
Congress to the rescue?
President Donald Trump has on multiple occasions voiced his desire to see all the remaining BTC be mined in the U.S., which presumably includes tokens mined by American Bitcoin Corp (NASDAQ: ABTC), the mining op affiliated with his sons Eric and Don Jr. (ABTC is one of the few miners still focused on building a BTC treasury, having recently hit the 7,000-token mark, good enough for 16th position overall.)
Trump’s Congressional water-bearers appear eager to help realize his vision via new legislation that aims to “bring critical digital infrastructure back to the United States.” On March 31, Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) announced the Mined in America Act, which aims to boost America’s domestic mining capabilities while torpedoing similar moves by those dastardly foreigners.
The bill’s full text has yet to drop, but the GOP co-sponsors claim it would direct the Department of Commerce to “establish a voluntary certification program for cryptocurrency mining facilities and mining pools.” Certified facilities would be required to “transition away from mining equipment manufactured by companies tied to foreign adversaries,” the identities of which went unspecified. (More on this in a moment.)
The bill would also seek to shore up domestic ASIC production by directing the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to “help U.S. manufacturers develop secure and energy-efficient cryptocurrency mining equipment.”
Federal energy and rural programs would also be enlisted to integrate certified projects rather than create new government initiatives aimed at achieving all of the above.
A non-senatorial quote accompanying the announcement cites the 97% share of mining hardware currently produced by Chinese companies, including Bitmain, the unquestioned ASIC manufacturing leader. Bitmain has ruffled some Congressional feathers over potential security risks allegedly associated with connecting its hardware to America’s energy grids, or installing same within spitting distance of some military facilities.
Bitmain has attempted to smooth these feathers by shifting some of its ASIC production to the U.S. Shrewdly, Bitmain has also established deep business ties with the Trump-tied ABTC, which would seem to offer Bitmain some level of immunity from any federal probes that might or might not be ongoing.
That isn’t stopping some Trump opponents from demanding to know the status of such probes. A few days before the Cassidy/Lummis bill was announced, Bloomberg reported that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick seeking info on how his department is addressing “potential national security concerns” surrounding Bitmain. It’s unclear if Lutnick has responded.
Russian miners can be forgiven for being confused
Presumably, mining rigs made in Russia would also be unwelcome in America should the Cassidy/Lummis bill become law of the land. Then again, Russia itself doesn’t appear all that sure that it wants the things either.
Last month, seasonal mining bans imposed years ago in two of Russia’s more remote regions (the Republic of Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai) were set to expire. But on March 18, the government renewed these bans for another five years but also made them year-round, making it unquestionably illegal to operate mining equipment in these regions until March 15, 2031.
That makes 13 regions of Russia in which mining is off-limits, and Andrei Maksimov, the electricity chief of Russia’s Ministry of Energy, said he’d be only too happy to impose additional bans if local governors reach out to say their electricity grids are under strain.
As if on cue, Sergey Voropanov, Energy Minister for the Moscow region, suggested last week that he’s ready to submit such a request, saying such a move would free up 1 GW of electrical capacity. Voropanov also suggested he’d like to see all local AI/HPC data centers move to designated areas that don’t connect to the same grid as the general public.
Last month, Russia banned data center operators from simultaneously mining tokens, but the government has yet to specify how those who violate this edict will be punished. The current plan is to add these penalties to the proposed amendments to Russia’s criminal code that would penalize miners who skirt the regional bans or fail to register their mining gear with the state. This penalty bill will have its first reading in the Duma on April 14.
Russia estimates that some 50,000 individuals are currently engaged in mining activities, while only 1,489 registrants (609 companies, 880 individuals) have signed on with the government. Last month, the Federal Tax Service (FTS) reported that registered miners paid RUB567 million (US$7.1 million) in taxes last year, less than 10% of what the government expected to collect from the sector.
Miners who draw less than 6,000 kWh per month are exempt from the registration requirements. But the FTS recently reminded individual miners that they need to start reporting their mining activities—both in terms of tokens generated and any profits made from selling said tokens—to the taxman by April 30.
At least one Duma deputy thinks the slow uptake of miner registration is due to the government taking an ‘all sticks, no carrots’ approach. Anton Gorelkin noted that the government failed to follow through on a proposal to allow miners who illegally imported ASICS from abroad to register and continue operating this gear legally. Gorelkin said “the legal framework necessary for this has not yet been found.”
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