Overview
- Twenty One Capital CEO Raphael Zagury presented at Bitcoin Asia on Aug. 28 and filed the prepared remarks arguing the network is in a first-ever “hashrate bear market.”
- Estimated mining power has failed to recover to late-2025 levels and the network is experiencing its longest stretch without a new hashrate high in a decade.
- Bitcoin’s price has climbed while network computing power continued to decline, an unusual divergence that shows higher BTC prices have not yet pulled large amounts of capacity back online.
- Several operators have decommissioned miners or converted sites into AI and high-performance computing centers, with examples including IREN and TeraWulf and long-term compute deals such as Riot’s agreement with Anthropic, even as other public miners continue to add Bitcoin capacity.
- Bitcoin’s protocol still lowers mining difficulty when power leaves the network, but long-duration AI contracts and multi-year data-center commitments could prevent that idle capacity from returning quickly so upcoming difficulty updates and company filings will be key to tracking what is permanent.