Bitcoin miners are increasingly shifting toward AI compute and data-center operations as CoinShares estimates annual returns of about $1.5 million per megawatt (MW), three times the $500,000 generated by BTC mining. The trend has already led some publicly listed miners to cancel hardware purchases, sell Bitcoin reserves and leave mining altogether. Core Scientific paid about $42 million, or US$41.9 million, to terminate its 15 EH/s Proto agreement, while Keel, formerly Bitfarms, and Cipher sold part of their BTC reserves to finance AI and data-center build-outs. Keel stopped BTC mining in June, IREN plans to do so by December 2026, and MARA has been gradually moving into AI. CoinShares estimates that 35 EH/s of hashrate will leave listed miners by the end of the year and says a Bitcoin price rebound may not reverse the transition. The shift follows BTC's decline from above $125,000 in October 2025 to below $60,000 in 2026, while average mining costs reached $75,500 in the second quarter of 2026 and Bitcoin fell to a record low of $58,400. BTC mining revenue dropped from $60 million in late 2025 to $20 million in mid-2026 as the crypto winter intensified, while AI leases offered more stable returns. CoinShares views the hashrate decline as consistent with typical post-halving patterns and says it could recover before the next halving. Economist Saifedean Ammous argues that aggregate mining may have peaked and may not return to its previous secular growth path, partly because rewards are scheduled to shrink from 3.125 BTC to 1.56 BTC in 2028. MARA CEO Fred Thiel has previously expressed a similar outlook. The long-term impact on Bitcoin remains uncertain.