In accordance with new on-chain knowledge, the Bitcoin community is experiencing a sustained interval of “miner capitulation” with a constant drop in mining problem since November 2025.
Bitcoin problem has been persistently dropping since November, which seemingly implies that miners are tapping out or switching to different kinds of enterprise.
Sadly, the profitability of miners nonetheless within the recreation has not likely modified. pic.twitter.com/V25VsV3shM— Brady Dale (@BradyDale) January 26, 2026
Within the meantime, profitability is stagnant, and operators are unplugging their machines en masse.
The good unplug
The Bitcoin problem chart paints a stark image of the exodus. Issue hit an all-time excessive of almost 155 T in early November 2025. Since that peak, the metric has stepped down persistently, crashing to its present stage of 141.67 T as of late January 2026.
Mining problem determines how exhausting it must be to discover a block. When extra miners be a part of, it will get tougher. After they depart, it will get simpler. The stepped decline within the chart confirms that large quantities of hashrate are being taken offline. Miners are “tapping out” since they’re unable to justify the electrical energy prices of operating their fleets.
In late October, miner profitability (hashprice) fell off a cliff. It dropped from ~$49/PH/s to ~$35/PH/s in a matter of days.
Regardless of the issue dropping, which ought to theoretically make it extra worthwhile for the remaining miners, profitability has barely budged. It stays caught within the $38–$40 vary.
This creates a “profitability lure.” The remaining miners are getting a bigger slice of the pie, however the worth of that pie is probably going too low to make a distinction.
The place are they going?
Miners are “switching to different kinds of enterprise.” Because of high-performance computing (HPC) contracts paying considerably greater than Bitcoin mining, many amenities are repurposing their energy infrastructure to host AI knowledge facilities.
For a lot of, the selection is easy: mine Bitcoin at a loss, or lease the ability capability to AI companies for assured revenue.
