PUBLIC MINERS CUT 49.3 EH/S IN TWO QUARTERS AS POWER SHIFTS TO AI — TERAWULF’S AI LEASES NOW OUTEARN ITS MINING — ITS $131 MILLION INTEREST BILL OUTRUNS BOTH

AI wants the same power bitcoin miners run on, and public miners are selling it. TheEnergyMag tracked 11 of them. Their realized hashrate fell from 368.3 EH/s in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 319.0 EH/s in the second quarter of 2026, down 49.3 EH/s or 13.4%. Leave out Bitdeer, which grew 44%, and the other ten fell 21.2%.

The network lost less, 10.6% on a quarterly average, so somebody else plugged in. On October 3, 2026, the difficulty adjustment moved 0.03%. Bitcoin doesn't care who mines it.

Follow the money at TeraWulf. In the first half of 2026 its high-performance computing leases, the AI side, brought in $53.0 million. Bitcoin mining brought in $25.8 million. It paid $131.1 million in interest on $5.2 billion of notes.

So the megawatts go to whoever pays more for them, and right now that's AI tenants. The lease checks don't cover the interest yet. The difficulty adjustment forgives anyone who unplugs. Lenders don't. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $85,448.