The bitcoin miners still adding hashrate while peers chase AI

The short read

Bitcoin miners are splitting into two groups. One group is turning its sites into AI data centers. The other is still adding mining machines. American Bitcoin says this split is leading to "a more permanent decrease in hash rate" across the network.¹

Hashrate is the computing power a miner points at the Bitcoin network. If competitors take their machines off the network to host AI, the miners who stay have fewer rivals for the same coins. That is the main idea here, and the three companies in this piece show it from different angles.

In our data, American Bitcoin ranks first, HIVE Digital Technologies second and Cango third. Each one reported more capacity this summer. They differ in how much of that capacity is committed to bitcoin alone.

American Bitcoin: more coins from a bigger fleet

American Bitcoin is the clearest pure play of the three. It mined 932 bitcoin in Q2 2026, up from 817 in Q1, an increase of about 14%.⁵ Its Drumheller site was fully energized in April, which added about 3 exahash of next-generation capacity.⁵

An exahash per second is a quintillion guesses a second at the puzzle that earns new bitcoin. American Bitcoin's owned fleet was nearly 90,000 miners, or about 28.1 exahash per second of capacity, as of Q2 2026.² Because the company owns its fleet, its output depends on its own machines and power. It is not renting capacity from someone else.

The company is also still looking for sites. It says it is sourcing competitive sites for future expansion, including some that suit bitcoin mining because of latency constraints.⁸ Latency is the delay in moving data. A site too far from users to serve fast AI work can still mine bitcoin well, because mining does not need that speed.

This links back to the main idea. Management describes peers pivoting existing mining sites and signing AI data center deals.¹ If that continues, a miner that keeps buying sites and plugging in machines is adding capacity while others cut theirs. American Bitcoin leads our data, and these facts show why it matters here: it is the miner growing its bitcoin output on a fleet it owns.

HIVE: one power base, two businesses

HIVE Digital Technologies describes itself as one of the most efficient bitcoin miners, operating across 9 time zones in 5 languages.⁹ It is second in our data. Unlike American Bitcoin, HIVE is clearly building two businesses on one foundation.

The foundation is power. HIVE has 300 megawatts under construction in Paraguay and is expanding by another 100 megawatts.³ For any miner, secured megawatts set the limit on future capacity, whether the power ends up running mining machines or AI servers.

The second business is high-performance computing (HPC), meaning rented GPU capacity for AI work. HIVE announced a new five-year deal worth $70 million in annual recurring revenue for its HPC unit, which brings its total contracted revenue to $180 million.⁶ The company says it can deploy NVIDIA's reference architecture built for 2,016 GPUs,¹⁰ and it describes an expanding "AI gigafactory" vision, with its machine count up substantially so far this year.¹¹

For investors, the point is that HIVE does not have to choose between the two. A contract with recurring revenue is a different kind of income from mined bitcoin, which moves with the coin's price and the network's difficulty. Holding both can smooth the mix. It also means HIVE is not a pure bet on the shrinking-hashrate idea, because some of its new power may go to GPUs instead of miners.

Cango: owned and leased hashrate, plus an AI test site

Cango, third in our data, reports its capacity in two parts. As of June 30, its self-mining hashrate was 19.84 exahash per second and its leased hashrate was 7.74 exahash per second, for a combined operating hashrate of 27.58 exahash per second.⁴ Self-mining means machines Cango runs itself. Leased hashrate is capacity it uses under lease arrangements.

That split matters for the main idea. Owned capacity is the most direct way to benefit if rivals step back from mining. Leased capacity adds scale but depends on the terms of those agreements.

Cango is also testing AI work. Construction at its Georgia LN site finished in early July, and the site's infrastructure can support up to 3 megawatts, with room to expand.¹² The AI infrastructure there is complete, and the company is installing container units and GPUs.⁷ Next to Paraguay's hundreds of megawatts at HIVE,³ this looks more like a pilot than a pivot, and for now Cango still looks like a hashrate story with a small AI option.

How to think about it, and what to watch

Put together, the facts show a range. American Bitcoin is the most committed to mining, with rising output and an active search for sites.^5,8 HIVE runs mining and contracted HPC side by side on a growing power base.^3,6 Cango has a large hashrate mix and an early GPU site.^4,7

If American Bitcoin's view holds and the drop in network hash rate proves lasting,¹ the miners still adding machines are the most exposed to the upside of that shift. The miners building AI capacity are protected in a different way, through contracted revenue rather than coins mined.

Three things are worth watching next quarter. First, whether American Bitcoin's coins mined keep rising from the 932 it reported for Q2.⁵ Second, how much of HIVE's Paraguay power goes to mining versus GPUs.³ Third, whether Cango's self-mined share grows compared with its leased hashrate.⁴