08-07-2026 
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The second quarter of 2026 was the best and worst of times for block reward miners, as the BTC token’s price tumbled and miners pivoting to artificial intelligence (AI) took on serious infrastructure costs.
- AI-pivoting miners no longer ‘wowing’ the market
- Canaan to sell off ‘portion’ of its BTC treasury to boost share price
- Texas pumps brakes on AI data center energy demands
- ABTC mines record amount of BTC in Q2, treasury tops 8,000 tokens
- Cipher talking with tenants re converting last mining facility to AI
- Terawulf ‘shortening the useful lives’ of its remaining mining rigs
- CleanSpark: mining funds buildout, AI reaps the profits
- MARA: mining got us here, but doesn’t define our future
As of Thursday evening, the average all-in cost of mining a single BTC token—including depreciation of older, less efficient ASIC mining rigs and the need to replace them with newer, faster, more expensive ones—exceeds the token’s fiat value by ~$6,000. BTC has traded in a stubborn range of $60-$65,000 for two months now, and nothing seems capable of jolting the token out of its lethargy.
The next network difficulty adjustment scheduled for August 8 is currently projected to raise the rate by ~1% to 127.3 trillion hashes, aka the average number of mathematical guesses required to ‘find’ a new block on the network and claim the 3.125 BTC block reward.
With a few notable exceptions, miners are actively pivoting to serving as data centers for AI and other high-performance computing (HPC) companies. This pivot offers a far more predictable revenue stream than the game of chance that mining often resembles (case in point: a solo miner with a negligible hashrate became the latest upstart to frustrate the big boys by finding a block on August 2).
Publicly traded miners have also come to enjoy the major share price spikes that follow announcements of multi-billion-dollar deals with data center tenants. But new data suggests investors are becoming a little more selective—and perhaps a lot more jaded—when it comes to hammering the ‘buy’ button after breathless AI deal news.
On Thursday, The Energy Mag (formerly The Miner Mag) published data tracking miner share price moves following 25 different AI/HPC infrastructure announcements between June 2024 and August 4, 2026. “The deals are arriving faster and carrying slightly richer revenue per megawatt. At the same time, the stocks announcing them are moving less.”
The data shows spikes as high as 32.5% for the earliest announcements, falling to just 6.3% at the latter end. The median moves of the first eight announcements were 14.8%, falling to 7.3% for the final eight.
We’ll quote this verbatim, because H.L. Mencken would be proud: “The contracts got fatter while the candles got shorter. It is not to suggest that the market is shrugging these deals off. But it appears to be reacting with a polite nod instead of spraying champagne around the room like it used to … Scarcity creates excitement. Familiarity turns excitement into a spreadsheet.”
Canaan to sell BTC to save its skin
Some miners are having a tougher time than others. Last month, Canaan Inc. (NASDAQ: CAN) was granted a 180-day extension on its deadline to boost its share price back above the Nasdaq’s minimum $1 value, a status Canaan hasn’t held since last November.
Canaan chairman/CEO Nangeng Zhang and CFO Jin ‘James’ Cheng bought a combined total of over one million Canaan shares in June, but this buy didn’t move the market confidence needle. And with Canaan’s shares currently trading at ~$0.20, the company is ready to break the glass box labeled ‘emergency.’
On August 4, Canaan announced that it has decided to “monetize a portion of its digital asset treasury to fund repurchases of its American depositary shares.” At the end of June, Canaan had 1,867 BTC in its treasury, worth around $130 million. But as the company notes, its shares are “trading below the combined value of its digital assets holdings and its cash and cash equivalents.”
Zhang said the decision to sell the family silver (and/or digital gold) “reflects our disciplined approach to capital allocation and our commitment to creating long-term shareholder value.” Zhang believes Canaan’s market value “does not fully reflect the value of our digital asset holdings, cash position, and the strength of our underlying business. Using a portion of our digital asset treasury to repurchase shares therefore, represents a compelling allocation of capital and demonstrates our confidence in the Company’s long-term prospects.’”
The scope of the planned sell-off wasn’t specified, but Canaan authorized a share buyback program last December that would allow it to repurchase up to $30 million in the 12 months ending December 12, 2026.
Texas rethinks data center welcome mat
Texas rolled out the welcome mat for miners and data center operators, but new projects in the Lone Star State appear to have worn out that welcome. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is currently dealing with 1,800 requests for the right to collectively draw over 474Gw of power from the state’s electrical grid, more than five times the grid’s record peak demand. Around 90% of those requests were made by data centers.
With far too many pigs for these teats, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Monday that ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) will conduct “a comprehensive verification and audit of all data centers advancing through ERCOT’s interconnection process. The PUCT and ERCOT must complete this audit before any data center project moves forward.”
Abbott issued a directive in June stipulating certain conditions for accessing the state’s grid, including whether data centers supply their own power, how much water they consume, and what measures they’re taking to avoid annoying residents living within earshot of the notoriously noisy facilities, etc.
Bottom line: miners (with or without data center plans) who don’t already have facilities set up in Texas are likely out of luck. On the flip side, miners who already have grid access and are looking to pivot away from mining to AI may now have a more convincing pitch to data center clients: Come with me if you want to live.
ABTC embraces ‘pure play’ mining identity
Our Q2 financial roundup starts with American Bitcoin Corp (NASDAQ: ABTC), the Trump-linked mining operation that was spun off from Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) in March 2025. ABTC reported revenue of $67 million in the three months ending June 30, 8% better than Q1’s tally.
ABTC booked a net loss of $57.1 million, an improvement over Q1’s $81.8 million loss. The loss was driven by a $71.2 million write-down on the fair value of the BTC in ABTC’s treasury, although that’s a much smaller hit than the $117.2 million loss these tokens suffered in Q1.
ABTC mined 932 BTC in Q2, 115 better than Q1’s tally and a new company record. This bounty allowed ABTC to boost its BTC treasury by 981 tokens, finishing Q2 with 8,002 tokens. The BTC mined in Q2 were supplemented by ~$4 million in “strategic at-market purchases” of BTC. Since the quarter ended, ABTC’s treasury has surpassed 8,300 tokens, ranking the company 16th on the Bitcoin Treasuries list of public companies.
Despite these achievements, ABTC was forced to conduct a reverse stock split on July 2 to boost its share price above the Nasdaq’s $1 minimum bid price. The move bought ABTC some breathing space, but the shares have lost more than one-fifth their value since that split, although they enjoyed a healthy rise following the release of its Q2 report.
On the analyst call, CEO Mike Ho credited the Q2 production rise to the company’s Drumheller, Alberta site being fully energized, “adding roughly three EH/s of next-generation capacity.” ABTC currently ranks sixth on the list of mining operators with an operating capacity of 25 EH/s.
ABTC’s chief strategy officer, Eric (son of Donald) Trump, took umbrage on the call about ABTC being compared to the digital asset treasury (DAT) firms that sprung up over the past couple of years, most of which are now seriously flailing as BTC refuses to play the ‘number go up’ game.
Eric claimed DATs “have to go out and buy Bitcoin … at fair market price,” whereas ABTC is “mining for roughly 50¢ on the dollar … so many other [DATs] are just kind of dead in the water … the cost of being public is eating them alive. We’re sitting here operating at 49% gross margins, executing on our plan each and every day.”
On July 31, ABTC announced that it had appointed Paul Sacks as its interim CFO, effective August 4. Sacks is a former exec at trading platform BlockFills who joined ABTC in May as its Head of Derivatives. Sacks replaces president/CFO Matthew Prusak, who on July 30 informed the company that he was leaving to join Texas-based AI/energy infrastructure firm Giga Energy as its chief business officer and interim CFO.
Cipher looking to convert last mining site to AI
Cipher Digital (formerly Cipher Mining [NASDAQ: CIFR]) announced a Bitcoin Mining Exit Strategy in February, so it won’t come as much of a surprise that its Q2 mining revenue fell by more than 41% year-on-year to $24.8 million.
Cipher said its last operating mining site, Odessa (near the Texas town of the same name), mined 346 BTC in Q2 and still boasts a hashrate of 11.6 EH/s. But CEO Tyler Page said “we don’t anticipate additional capital investment in this part of the business as we continue prioritizing HPC, and we are encouraged by the level of [tenant] interest we’re seeing in conversion of Odessa to an HPC site.”
Cipher’s costs rose 16.4% to $103.4 million in Q2, resulting in an operating loss of $78.5 million, up nearly three-quarters year-on-year. But net losses quintupled year-on-year and more than doubled quarter-on-quarter to $267.5 million thanks to interest expenses and the change in fair value of a warrant liability.
Like other pivoting miners, Cipher is taking on major debt to finance the buildout of its AI/HPC data centers, and not all investors are keen to stick around until the AI revenue starts rolling in.
Cipher’s share price dove 16% following its earnings release, and are now down nearly 18% in the past five days. However, the shares are up more than one-quarter since the year began and have risen an astonishing 258% over the past 12 months.
Page was keen to hype the launch of the company’s first data center this month, two months ahead of schedule. “Rent has commenced” from its tenant at the Black Pearl site in Wink, Texas, and Cipher just acquired an option on a new site (‘Apollo’) outside San Antonio that could add “up to 900Mw” that it hopes to have in action soon.Cipher has a few other Texas sites in development, and analysts were keen to know how these projects might be impacted by the state’s new wariness re additional grid allocation. Page acknowledged being “a little bit surprised” by Gov. Abbott’s announcement, but insisted that Cipher has “done all those things” that Abbott detailed in his announcement. “Long answer is, it actually doesn’t change anything about how bullish I am for Cipher.”
Terawulf pushes its aging mining rigs onto an ice floe
TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) is on record saying it expects to be fully done with mining operations by next year, so no one’s surprised by the fact that Q2’s mining revenue fell by nearly three-quarters year-on-year to $12.8 million. Meanwhile, HPC lease revenue went from zero in Q225 to $31.9 million in the most recent quarter, representing ~71% of total revenue.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one already, but Q2’s costs/expenses tripled to $185.2 million, leading to an operating loss of $140.4 million, nine times the red ink in Q225. Fair value warrant changes helped push Terawulf’s Q2 net loss to $929.7 million, 50x the net loss one year ago. Fun stuff.
Undaunted, TeraWulf CFO Patrick Fleury called Q2 “another meaningful step in the transformation of our financial profile.” The sole mention of Bitcoin or mining in the company’s analyst call was to note the nearly $12 million of accelerated depreciation of ASIC mining rigs, “whose useful lives were shortened” as Terawulf transitioned one of its sites from mining to HPC.
Terawulf’s shares shot up following its Q2 report, and while they’ve since surrendered some of those gains, the shares are up over 57% since the year began and up an impressive 257% over the past 12 months.
CleanSpark: Mining still has a role to play…in funding AI buildout
CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) signed its first AI data center client last week (we still don’t know who with), but the company remains entirely reliant on its mining operations to keep the lights on. CleanSpark’s mining revenue totaled $138 million in its fiscal Q3 ending June 30, slightly better than Q2’s $136.4 million but a significant decline from Q325’s $199 million.
CleanSpark booked a net loss of just under $240 million in Q3, although that’s significantly better than Q2’s $378 million loss. About $133 million of Q3’s loss stemmed from the devaluation of the BTC tokens in the company’s treasury, although Q2’s markdown was $263 million, so don’t complain.
CleanSpark mined 586 BTC in July, down from June’s 614, as average operating hashrate fell to 38.6 EH/s. That rate is down from June’s 42.6 EH/s and May’s 46.2 EH/s, as the company continues to convert mining sites into data centers.
Through the first seven months of CleanSpark’s current fiscal year, the company has produced 4,310 BTC, down from 4,639 tokens at the same point in fiscal 2025. CleanSpark sold 229 of the BTC it mined in July, finishing the month with a treasury consisting of 13,391 tokens.
On the analyst call, CEO Matthew Schultz referenced the company’s “legacy Bitcoin mining business and the role it plays as we evolve into something profoundly different.” With mining ops already up and running, Schultz said CleanSpark has “the ability to bring a paying load online faster than a traditional data center developer.” That and CleanSpark’s BTC treasury “gives us a set of levers that very few companies in this sector can match.”
Schultz dismissed suggestions that CleanSpark would look to unload its entire BTC treasury to fund its data center buildouts, saying “we are never forced sellers of anything … Mining funds the platform, the balance sheet protects our shareholders, and the AI business monetizes the portfolio for decades to come.”
CleanSpark CFO Gary Vecchiarelli offered a slightly different take, saying the company’s BTC treasury was a source of “significant dry powder… which we would be willing to part with, if and when the right opportunity presents itself.”
MARA: Mining is our foundation, it’s just that it’s a loser
Once the capo di tutti capi of BTC miners in terms of hashrate, MARA (NASDAQ: MARA) let that throne be usurped by rival Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) while MARA went off in search of AI/HPC clients. But AI/HPC isn’t yet paying MARA’s bills.
MARA’s Q2 mining revenue came in at $174.9 million, only $300k or so ahead of Q1’s result, but a 25% reduction from Q225. MARA booked an operating loss of $521 million, around half of Q1’s $1.06 billion loss. Net losses hit $611.3 million, similarly halved from Q1.
In both quarters, the biggest cost items were depreciation of mining rigs and asset write-downs due to the decline in the value of the tokens in MARA’s BTC treasury. MARA’s treasury leads all miners and until this year ranked second only to Michael Saylor’s Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) among public companies stockpiling BTC. But MARA’s treasury contained 35,577 tokens at the end of Q2, down sharply from its peak last year of 53,250.
Many of MARA’s BTC were acquired rather than mined, with MARA taking on significant debt to buy these tokens, often at far higher prices than the token currently trades for. So while MARA execs might brush off these write-downs as paper losses, barring some major reversal in BTC’s fiscal fortunes, these losses are all too palpable for MARA investors.
While most of the analysts on the call were solely interested in AI/HPC, CEO Fred Thiel called mining “an important part of MARA, not because it defines the limits of our future, but because it continues to strengthen the broader platform. Mining gave us the foundation, strategic power assets, experience operating large scale computers, and the capital allocation discipline we use today. In that sense, mining was never the final destination. It was a platform we could build from.”
Thiel said mining “still plays three important roles” for MARA. First, generating cash flow; second, flexibility, like kitting out a newly energized site with mining rigs while the AI facility is designed, permitted, and built; and third, “mining is still one of our best sources of operating insights. The work of optimizing power use, improving compute efficiency, and managing mission critical systems at scale directly informs how we approach AI infrastructure.”
MARA shares closed Thursday down 5.25% to $10.65, although they’re up 18.6% for the year-to-date. But it was only nine months or so ago that MARA was trading closer to $20. Best accelerate that pivot before the ‘foundation’ gives way under your feet.
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Watch: Bitcoin mining meets AI at Mining Disrupt 2025
