2026 Bitcoin Mining Outlook

Following Bitcoin’s fourth quadrennial halving event in 2024, Bitcoin miner revenue saw a small increase in 2025, benefiting from the positive price action of bitcoin. Miners are projected to generate $17.2 billion in 2025 compared to $14.7 billion the year prior. Despite the increase in total annual revenue, fees as a share of total revenue (which is made up of block subsidies and fee payments) saw an 82% drop. In 2024, miner fees as a share of revenue were approximately 7%. This year, that share has dropped to roughly 1%. This sharp decline stemmed from the unwinding of last year’s Bitcoin onchain frenzy driven by Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens, and Runes. 

Source: The Block

Despite volatile price action for well over a decade, Bitcoin’s hash rate has consistently grown as new mining entities enter the market to compete with ever-evolving mining hardware efficiencies. In 2025, Bitcoin’s hashrate reached 1 zetahash for the first time in history, leading to some estimates suggesting Bitcoin now makes 0.80% of the world’s electricity consumption.

Source: The Block, Coin Metrics

For Bitcoin mining pools, Foundry USA, the five-year-old subsidiary of crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group, remains the world’s largest, accounting for 30% of the market share. 

Source: The Block, mempool

In 2025, most publicly traded Bitcoin miners saw significant gains as they capitalized on the ongoing AI boom and accelerated their pivots toward offering AI infrastructure and services. The average return of top publicly traded Bitcoin-centric mining companies YTD is 62%, with the median returning 16%, compared to bitcoin’s negative return for the year. For example, the best-performing Bitcoin mining stock in our tracked group this year was IREN, which completed a full AI pivot to providing data centers for AI companies, initially signalling its intent to provide AI data infrastructure in early 2025.

Source: The Block, Yahoo Finance

Mining Outlook for 2026

While Bitcoin mining revenue this year was saved by positive YoY price action, the popping of the onchain Bitcoin bubble saw fees collapse, making Bitcoin miners increasingly reliant on the bitcoin price increasing and an ever-decreasing reward subsidy to sustain their businesses. As AI infrastructure becomes a more attractive business line for miners, there is a growing risk that firms will gradually divert resources away from Bitcoin mining, potentially reducing the network’s hash power and weakening Bitcoin’s security over time. The Bitcoin community will continue to need to build an ecosystem that boosts demand to use the network.