hashrate

Cryptocurrency researcher Kerman Kohli published "Compute Financing" on Substack on October 19, 2026, discussing financing for computing power construction. He believes one of the main bottlenecks is capital, especially credit: early expenditures mainly come from balance sheet cash, followed by a shift to equity financing. The article cites Alphabet's $85 billion financing and Meta's fundraising through shareholder dilution, with the next step being the credit market.Kohli summarizes the current beliefs of creditors into three points, which he believes are incompatible: AI may be a bubble; the biggest risk is counterparty risk in purchase contracts; the underlying GPUs are not valuable and depreciate like ordinary hardware. He argues that demand is closer to infinite, stating that the demand for agentic AI is growing by about 2.5 to 5 times each year, with supply potentially doubling by the end of 2030. Memory is expected to sell out by 2027, with computing power commitments reaching trillions of dollars, and he mentions Jane Street's multi-billion dollar commitments, as well as the needs of pharmaceutical companies, research, military, and cybersecurity.Regarding efficiency, he states that when the cost of intelligence drops by 90%, the increase in usage is even greater, with a baseline exceeding 10 times, and he cites Jevons' Paradox.On the topic of purchasing, Kohli believes that computing power is more substitutable than real estate; when demand is strong, if someone withdraws their commitment, others will take over. He mentions that many creditors require 2 to 3 year contracts and down payments of 20% to 30%, sometimes as high as 50%, and locking in long-term discount contracts effectively shorts computing power for lenders. The article also states that computing power rental prices have risen by about 50% in the past 6 months and about 100% in the past year, with B300 supplies being tight. Regarding collateral, he notes that the A100 from 2020 is still operational and rented out until 2029, leading him to believe it has at least about 9 years of use value; the current price of B200 is about 50% higher than when it was released about two years ago, and a 6-year-old A100 is still worth about 25% of its value. He concludes that computing power will surpass real estate to become the largest asset class, and the scale of credit-supported computing power is currently just beginning.

Liu Xing, the head of public relations at ByteDance, publicly questioned the claim that "over half of China's AI computing power is used for creating light-hearted dramas," stating that the related data is "somewhat unreliable." He revealed that only about 10% of ByteDance's total computing power is used for training and inference of video generation models, and this percentage also includes model development, not all of it is used for producing short dramas.The controversy originated from an investor communication record disclosed by Chinese Online in June this year. The company stated that 55% of domestic AI Token consumption comes from short dramas and video generation, 24% is used for e-commerce marketing, and software development accounts for only 15%. After this set of data was circulated, it evolved into the claim that "half of China's computing power is used for creating light-hearted dramas," leading to discussions such as "the U.S. creates the future, while China creates light-hearted dramas."

According to Xinhua News Agency, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President Xi Jinping emphasized during his inspection in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia on the 16th that it is necessary to coordinate high-quality development and high-level protection, and to unswervingly follow the path of ecological priority and green development. Xi Jinping learned about the "East Data West Calculation" hub node and the green computing power industry in the Chahar High-tech Zone, and required that completed projects operate efficiently and subsequent construction be completed on schedule.He stated that the computing power network is one of the "six networks" planned and constructed by the country, and the computing power industry is in a stage of accelerated development, emphasizing the importance of "computing power and electricity coordination" and "computing power and water coordination." Xi Jinping also inspected the Huangqi Sea Nature Reserve and required the comprehensive implementation of the Wetland Protection Law.

Pantera Capital Junior Partner Jay Yu published an article titled "The Rise of Compute Markets," stating that computing power and data center spending have become a trillion-dollar category, but GPU procurement is still mainly done through group chats, over-the-counter brokers, and bilateral agreements. He noted that the financialization of computing power is still in its early stages, constrained by SKU, time, and location, but could become a commodity asset similar to electricity or oil in the next 5 to 10 years. Jay Yu believes that the computing power market may form a "hardware-supplier-cluster" structure similar to the electricity "grid-operator-node," with new cloud vendors being structural shorts on GPUs, while on-demand platforms and application layers are longs.He mentioned that for every $100 spent on inference at the application layer, about $45 flows to the on-demand layer, about $50 flows to the new cloud or GPU layer, and about $5 flows to routing layers like OpenRouter. NVIDIA can be seen as the "central bank" of computing power, having announced support for up to 25% residual value. He also stated that physical delivery has a more enduring moat, and indices, cash-settled exchanges, and financing tools will subsequently emerge, with participants including SF Compute, Vast AI, Runpod, Compute Exchange, and others. The computing power market does not have mandatory price transparency requirements, and basis risk may be greater.

According to Xinhua News Agency, the Bank of China Inner Mongolia Branch recently issued the first "Computing Power Token Loan" in the Inner Mongolia Hohhot New Area. By innovating the credit evaluation system, it incorporates the scale of enterprise token usage, computing power cooperation orders, core technology qualifications, and scientific research and development capabilities into the core credit indicators, while weakening traditional mortgage guarantee requirements.Currently, Hohhot's computing power scale reaches 150,000 P, of which intelligent computing accounts for 146,000 P, and the green computing power index ranks first in the country. The local area also promotes "Computing Power Loans" and medium-to-long-term technological transformation loans, using policy financial tools and syndicated loans to address capital and large fund needs, and has launched "Computing Chain Insurance" and cybersecurity insurance to provide diversified risk control guarantees for heavy asset projects such as data centers against fire, water damage, machine failure, and more.

VanEck released its on-chain Bitcoin report in mid-February 2026. The report noted, "BTC continues to decline, and market sentiment is weakening: Bitcoin has dropped 29% in the past 30 days, pushing the NUPL (Net Unrealized Profit/Loss) indicator close to the 'anxiety zone' and briefly entering the 'fear zone'.Meanwhile, leverage has completed its reset, and the size of open contracts has fallen back to levels not seen since September 2024. Mid-term holders dominate the distribution, but selling is slowing down: realized selling is still mainly concentrated among those holding for 1 to 5 years, although in the past month, the distribution speed of coins held for over 1 year has noticeably slowed.Miner profit margins are under pressure, and hash rate is contracting: over the past 90 days, the total network hash rate has decreased by about 14%, reflecting tightening mining economics. Historically, similar situations often herald stronger subsequent returns for Bitcoin."

Binance released the "2025 Binance Pool Review Report," which shows that against the backdrop of robust growth in Bitcoin network hash rate in 2025, Binance Pool launched over 20 system upgrades and held 10 community events (including 8 Super Mine events), rewarding approximately 590 miners with additional earnings, enhancing the platform's mining experience and earnings stability.During this period, the Bitcoin network hash rate increased from about 795 EH/s at the beginning of the year to 1,031 EH/s (approximately +30% YoY). Binance stated that in 2026, it will continue to optimize product experience, expand global incentive activities, and launch more features to provide miners with a smoother and safer mining environment.

According to a report by The Miner Mag, the Bitcoin mining industry is facing profitability pressures. In October, the network hash rate climbed to a record 1.16 ZH/s, but the price of Bitcoin fell to around $81,000, causing the hashprice to drop below $35/PH/s, lower than the median of $45/PH/s for listed mining companies, with some miners nearing breakeven.The payback period for mining machines has extended to over 1,200 days, and financing costs continue to rise. Although mining companies are accelerating their shift towards AI and high-performance computing (HPC), the related revenues still cannot compensate for the significant decline in Bitcoin mining income.However, after JPMorgan raised the target prices for CleanSpark, Cipher Mining, and IREN, the stock prices of the top ten listed mining companies all rose on Monday. IREN signed a five-year, $9.7 billion GPU cloud services agreement with Microsoft in November.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, Bitcoin enters its fifth era after the 2024 block reward halving, with the single block reward decreasing from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Mining companies are responding to profit pressures through hardware upgrades, energy optimization, and regional migration. By May 1, 2025, the total network hash rate is expected to reach 831 EH/s, a 77% increase from the 2024 low of 519 EH/s, with a peak rising to 921 EH/s.The iteration of mining machines accelerates the energy efficiency competition, with Bitmain's Antminer S21+ achieving a hash rate of 216 TH/s and an energy consumption ratio of 16.5 J/TH, while MicroBT's immersion mining machine WhatsMiner M66S+ reduces energy consumption to 17 J/TH. TSMC and Samsung have already adopted 3-nanometer chip technology, with 2-nanometer processes soon to be implemented, driving continuous improvements in mining machine efficiency.Energy costs dominate the survival of mining companies, with the network difficulty rising to a historical high of 123T, and daily earnings per TH/s (Hashprice) dropping from $0.12 in April 2024 to $0.049 in the same period of 2025. The Omani government subsidizes electricity prices to maintain $0.05--$0.07 per kilowatt-hour, while semi-official projects in the UAE have electricity prices as low as $0.035--$0.045 per kilowatt-hour, attracting institutional-level mining operations. In the U.S., industrial electricity prices exceed $0.1 per kilowatt-hour, forcing mining companies to migrate to low-cost energy regions in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.A Cointelegraph research report indicates that the growing demand for AI computing power, global regulatory adjustments, and breakthroughs in hardware technology will continue to impact the industry landscape over the next 12 to 18 months. Efficiency optimization has become a survival necessity, with only leading mining companies able to maintain competitiveness through energy arbitrage and equipment upgrades, while sovereign nations adopt strategies alongside institutional entry or reshape Bitcoin's position in the global financial system.

ChainCatcher news, according to the official announcement, Binance Pool has launched the SuperMine event page and started a new event.During the event period (from April 17, 2025, 10:00 to May 17, 2025, 10:00 UTC), participants can share a reward pool of 5000 USDT vouchers by increasing their BTC hash rate.

ChainCatcher news, the Hashrate Index report indicates that Bitcoin's seven-day hashrate reached a historical high of 659 EH/s, an increase of 13.6% from the post-halving low of 580 EH/s.Additionally, according to data from Bitinfocharts, the average network hashrate reached 732 EH/s over the past weekend, setting a new record.The Hashrate Index explains that the increase in hashrate may indicate that publicly listed mining companies are launching their ASIC orders as planned, which means more powerful hardware is being activated, and competition will intensify as more hashrate comes online.The report notes that the current average block time is 9 minutes and 26 seconds. Top publicly listed mining companies have booked 76.6 EH/s of equipment for 2024. Furthermore, 12.9 EH/s of this equipment is expected to be delivered in the first quarter, and nearly 36 EH/s of equipment should be delivered in the second quarter. The Hashrate Index adds, "Regardless of where it comes from, the current surge in hashrate will bring a significant difficulty adjustment for miners in about 8 days."