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Morning Edition · Tuesday, August 18, 2026Published at 1:17 AM EDT · New York
Bitcoin Holds Above $64,000 as Miners Divert a Fifth of Their Computing Power to AI
Listed miners outside one expanding operator cut realised hashrate 21 percent in six months, while Moscow banned mining outright from August 15.
Bitcoin traded at $64,081 early on Tuesday while most large alternative tokens slipped, according to CoinDesk's market report. The exception it noted was Venice, whose token rose 10 percent after the company said it had crossed $100 million in annualised revenue.
The structural story is on the supply side of the network. Publicly listed miners reduced realised hashrate by 13.4 percent between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026 as they redirected power and data centre space toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Excluding Bitdeer, which kept expanding, the remaining group shed 21.2 percent over those six months. The economics explain the choice. In late March the listed cohort was producing coins at a weighted average cash cost near $80,000 against a spot price around $67,800, and the sector has signed more than $70 billion in cumulative AI and computing contracts. The research firm CoinShares projects that such services could account for as much as 70 percent of listed miners' revenue by the end of this year, against about 30 percent previously.
Policy is squeezing supply from a different direction. The Russian government banned cryptocurrency mining in Moscow, the surrounding Moscow region and eight districts of Kursk region from August 15 until the end of 2032, covering both mining infrastructure and participation in mining pools. RIA Novosti published an explainer setting out who the prohibition now covers. Officials cited the roughly one gigawatt of electricity consumed by mining in the Moscow region and the limited economic return it delivers locally.
What this means
Bitcoin's security depends on miners choosing to point power at the network, and for the first time a higher-paying customer is competing for the same electricity and the same buildings. Miners gain by converting volatile block rewards into contracted computing revenue, while bitcoin holders face a network whose hashrate now tracks AI data-centre economics as much as the coin price. Governments restricting mining in congested grids, as Russia has done around Moscow, push the same capacity toward regions with surplus power and toward the AI customers already bidding for it.
What to watch
- Whether total network hashrate keeps falling even with bitcoin above $64,000, which would confirm that AI contracts, not price, now set mining capacity.
- Further regional mining bans in Russia and elsewhere justified by grid load, since electricity policy is becoming the binding constraint on where mining can exist.
- The next round of miner earnings and the share of revenue coming from computing services rather than block rewards.
Observations to monitor, not financial advice.
Synthesized from: CoinDesk · RIA Novosti
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