JPMorgan reported that Bitcoin miners entered a pronounced profitability squeeze in late 2025, with revenue plunging even as network competition showed early signs of easing. The bank’s analysis links sharply lower hashprice, rising costs and stretched hardware payback periods to a strategic industry pivot toward AI and high‑performance computing (HPC).
JPMorgan found that the Bitcoin network’s hashrate fell for a second consecutive month in diciembre de 2025, following a roughly 3% monthly decline. That drop in competitive intensity did not translate into higher miner revenue; instead, miner revenue had fallen about 32% year‑on‑year by noviembre de 2025, reaching record lows in the bank’s dataset.
The core operational pressure was a collapsing hashprice — the revenue per unit of computing power — which JPMorgan estimated declined by approximately 30–35% (from about $55 to $35 per PH/s/day). At the same time, electricity and other operating costs continued to rise, and network difficulty increases stretched hardware payback horizons beyond 1.200 days. The combination tightened margins and made legacy ASIC deployments economically marginal.
Strategic responses and credit implications
Faced with that economics, miners have been accelerating a structural shift into AI/HPC hosting. JPMorgan’s analysis estimated AI hosting can generate up to 25x more revenue per kilowatt‑hour than Bitcoin mining for operators with existing power and low‑cost contracts. That revenue differential is the primary rationale for companies repurposing sites or signing colocation deals.
The bank translated that strategic picture into active coverage changes. It upgraded Riot Platforms to overweight, citing aggressive AI conversion as a competitive advantage. Cipher Mining retained favorable treatment on execution, while JPMorgan trimmed or downgraded other names — including IREN and CleanSpark — noting that valuation and execution risk vary across operators. Marathon was trimmed as well, reflecting differentiated exposure to the AI pivot and to Bitcoin price sensitivity.
JPMorgan framed the industry transition as execution‑dependent. Firms that can secure long‑dated, low‑cost power and close AI hosting contracts stand to replace volatile Bitcoin income with steadier data‑center revenue; others face protracted margin pressure and higher credit risk.
For traders and managers, the immediate implications are twofold: equity performance is increasingly being driven by AI‑hosting disclosure and contract wins rather than short‑term BTC moves, and balance‑sheet resilience will determine which miners survive prolonged low hashprice conditions. Funding, basis and leverage will amplify outcomes for more highly geared operators.
