As of January 19, 2026, the Bitcoin network's hash rate has fallen below the psychological threshold of 1000 EH/s (1 zettahash). The founder of the StandardHash platform, Leon Liu, cited a reason that shocked the crypto community: it is not just a technical failure, but the beginning of a large 'great migration' of power.
According to Liu, miners are massively redirecting their energy resources and infrastructure to support artificial intelligence (AI). The reason is banal — money. The profitability of mining $BTC is currently on the verge of unprofitability even for owners of the latest ASIC miners. At the same time, the demand for computing power for training neural networks is growing exponentially, offering much higher margins.
"AI is not just a trend; it's a real competitor for power grids," says the founder of StandardHash. He also suggested that the real state of affairs could be even worse, as large players like Bitmain might use "gray" schemes to connect excess capacities off public radars. For the Bitcoin network, this means a decrease in mining difficulty, which benefits those who remain but raises questions about security dynamics in the long term.
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