Bitcoin miners have got it hard right now.

Hash price — the metric measuring how much revenue miners earn per unit of computing power — hit an all-time low in recent weeks and the depressed price of the leading cryptocurrency is hurting profit margins for companies in the cutthroat industry.

But pivoting towards selling their processing powers to fuel the artificial intelligence revolution offers an increasingly alluring alternative.

Nick Hansen, CEO and co-founder of the Luxor mining pool, told DL News that “resisting the urge to transition to AI” will be Bitcoin miners’ biggest challenge in 2026.

Despite the move to AI being attractive, he said that it’s still “very difficult to balance [both mining and high-performance computing].”

The prediction comes as Bitcoin miners are struggling to make ends meet due to free-falling crypto prices, plunging daily transaction fees, and plummeting rewards for maintaining the blockchain — and that’s when they’re not being banned from operating all together.

Falling rewards

Bitcoin’s price trading at around $87,000, 30% below its October all-time high, is one reason for miners’ struggles. Most top miners in Q3 were breaking even at about $90,000 per Bitcoin, MinerMag data shows.

The lower the price, the smaller the rewards — in dollar terms — for maintaining the blockchain will be.

Those rewards have already shrunk after last year’s halving event slashed miner rewards for minting blocks in half to 3.125 digital coins.

Lower transaction fees aren’t helping miners make money, either. While institutional adoption by the likes of BlackRock has helped bring crypto into the mainstream, it means that a lot of Bitcoin has been locked up and won’t be used to make transactions.

With fewer transactions, miners face fewer fees.

AI pivot

Hence the AI pivot.

A number of top publicly listed miners have started directing resources to providing the infrastructure for high-powered computing.

Some miners are already going all-in on the industry as minting the biggest digital coin by market cap becomes unprofitable. Nasdaq-listed Bitfarms in November announced that it would wind down mining operations to focus instead on high-performance computing.

“Bitcoin miners are now an integral part of the AI value chain, providing warm powered shells for AI data centres — considered the biggest bottleneck to execution,” Bernstein analysts wrote in a November 3 report.

While many public miners are not dropping mining operations completely, they’re marketing themselves as “compute” or “digital infrastructure” companies while switching between minting digital coins and providing compute for AI — depending on which is more profitable.

“We’ve seen way more miners trying to say they’re in the ‘compute business’ as opposed to digital asset mining,” Hansen added. “Which I think is fair, given any idea of harnessing compute to produce value is easier to understand for the average investor.”

Top miners Terawulf, IREN, and Cipher Mining have signed multi-year HPC contracts with Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft.

Bitcoin miners have been eyeing up the AI space for some time now. While both industries require huge amounts of energy and data centers, the move isn’t always easy — AI data centres require more expertise than Bitcoin mining operations.

Gwyn Lauber, VP of corporate affairs at Bitcoin mining tech firm Canaan, said: “Margins are clearly under pressure right now, but Bitcoin mining has experienced many similar moments in the past.”

Lauber added that miners would be paying attention to the macroeconomic picture next year — including the next steps from the Federal Reserve.

“An easing cycle in 2026 would likely result in better Bitcoin prices and mining margins,” she said.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.