Bitcoin's seven-day average hashrate regained 1 zettahash per second—1,000 exahash per second—over the past week, hitting its highest level since March 3. The recovery occurred as large public mining companies reallocated significant capacity toward artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Difficulty rose 5.92% on October 16, reflecting the increased computational power. At the current pace of block production, another estimated 5.16% difficulty increase is coming in approximately seven days.
Public miners have been shedding mining capacity to convert facilities for high-performance computing and AI. Earlier last month, these companies reported a 52 percent quarterly increase in directly reported HPC and AI revenue. Converting a mining site to AI represents a permanent shift—once machines are removed and facility power committed to AI customers, that capacity does not return to Bitcoin mining.
The shift involved approximately $1.5 billion equivalent in hardware investment, using an assumed $20-per-terahash purchase price for the displaced equipment.
Despite the conversions, the Bitcoin network is rebuilding hashrate. Replacement capacity is emerging from other ecosystem sources, primarily small and medium-sized operators acquiring equipment that larger companies no longer need.
Bitdeer demonstrates this dual focus. The company's self-mining capacity reached 82.3 exahash per second in September, up from 79.9 EH/s in August and 35 EH/s a year earlier. Its co-mining business, which places machines in third-party data centers, expanded to 28.7 EH/s from 21.6 EH/s. Bitdeer added 9.5 EH/s in a single month across both segments.
Smaller operators are the main drivers of recovery. They are acquiring machines at a discount from larger companies exiting mining. Resale channels like Sazmining list pre-owned Antminer S21 XP machines available for hosting in Paraguay and Texas, enabling these machines to compete again on cheaper electricity and available rack space.
