This report shouldn’t be, and should not be thought-about as monetary, funding, or authorized recommendation. The creator holds no positions in Bitcoin mining shares.
Government Abstract
For this sixteenth semiannual cryptocurrency supercomputing report, as soon as once more three cash make the minimize for proof of labor (hash energy) generated annual financial worth. In combination the annual minted worth is round $12 billion for Bitcoin, Doge, and Zcash, and 93% of that is because of Bitcoin. No different POW coin exceeds $100 million in annual manufacturing.
Bitcoin had a big pullback in worth throughout This autumn, falling by over 50% and apparently bottoming in February and revisiting that backside this month. It appears to have resumed its long run climb and is buying and selling round $66,000 at the moment. This pullback has squeezed miner margins and accelerated the pivot towards AI and HPC infrastructure internet hosting. They need to swap to GPUs from ASICs so as to take action, however get pleasure from working on the environment friendly power frontier and may supply aggressive internet hosting charges.
Three nations: the US, China, and Russia dominate international hashrate with almost 2/3 of all of the hashrate between them, however there’s additionally continued diffusion towards smaller international locations with low-cost electrical energy inputs.
Hydrocooled methods have develop into more and more essential within the ASIC system combine, and particular person machines are approaching the 1000 Terahash/sec or 1 Petahash/sec (10¹⁵) stage in a worldwide community that’s of order 1 Zettahash (10²¹) sec. One sees instantly then that there are a number of thousands and thousands of machines concerned, contemplating a mixture of older and newer methods.
Bitcoin mining is now not merely “minting cash.” It’s evolving into:
a planetary-scale power balancing layer,versatile compute infrastructure,sovereign financial infrastructure,and a thermodynamic monetization community.
from electrical energy and the cryptographic calculations of a steady winner-take-all lottery, carried out above floor.
Introduction
We produce the CryptoSuper 500 report twice a 12 months, across the time of the 2 main supercomputing conferences: SC held within the US in November, and ISC held in Might/June in Germany. That is the sixteenth report, representing 7.5 years of protection. The prior fifteenth report from November 2025 is right here:
https://cryptoassets0417.medium.com/cryptosuper-report-15-q4-2025-70fffc59b4a4
We observe Bitcoin and some different proof of labor cryptocurrencies as a result of they’re a specialised type of excessive efficiency computing. Bitcoin shouldn’t be AI, however it’s a self-organizing autopoietic and chronic community for holding and transferring worth that has endured for 17.5 years.
Why a Bitcoin Commonplace
Not like different financial tech Bitcoin defines a scientifically exact customary for provide that can also be rooted straight in power and math.
The algorithm has decreased provide emission each 4 years such that now every new block mints 3.125 Bitcoin. That reward shall be minimize in half once more in two extra years and the inflation fee will drop from 0.8% to 0.4%. There may be an absolute cap on the provision of 21 million and there are lower than 1 million BTC but to be mined.
If Bitcoin have been an organization it might be the thirteenth largest by market cap; at the moment the community represents $1.3 trillion in worth.
It’s successfully the world’s largest decentralized supercomputer, consisting of thousands and thousands of competing and cooperating methods, all working the identical Nakamoto consensus algorithm in a continuous lottery with a winner-take-all award for every block of roughly 10 minutes’ length.
Gold comparability
Bitcoin’s value over its historical past has risen dramatically in gold phrases, adhering to an influence legislation steeper than the fifth energy of Bitcoin’s age.
Whereas gold holds its worth by means of time, Bitcoin has outperformed gold and may also transfer in a short time in house, crossing the globe in an hour.
For the reason that battle between the U.S. and Iran started on February 28, Bitcoin’s value has risen by over a 3rd towards gold; it has been a simpler geopolitical hedge throughout disaster. One motive is that Bitcoin is far more transportable, it may be despatched anyplace throughout the globe inside an hour (6 block confirmations). Iran has began accepting Bitcoin for tolls (charges) on ships passing by means of the Strait of Hormuz.
There may be not but sturdy public affirmation of large-scale crude oil purchases or settlements straight denominated in Bitcoin between sovereign states or main oil corporations.
Proof of Work cash
Out of 51 million (!) cryptocurrencies there are at the moment simply 55 with over $1 billion market cap. Bitcoin’s market cap is $1500 billion, and there’s an order of magnitude 1 Zettahash/sec of computational energy dedicated to decentralized Bitcoin minting, from a number of million Bitcoin methods across the globe. That is the world’s largest decentralized supercomputer.
Nearly all cryptocurrencies and there issuers are lazy. They aren’t created by way of actual work and power consumption. They’re air-dropped initially (created in skinny air) and develop provide by way of proof of stake or comparable algorithms. That is extra akin to promoting shares in an organization and under no circumstances like mining or minting.
Solely 7 of the 55 are Proof of Work cash, utilizing vital computational hash energy to mint new cash and safe their networks and transactions. And of these, solely three make our minimize of over $200 million manufacturing per 12 months, and are listed in Desk 1. Failing to make the minimize have been Bitcoin Money, Litecoin, Monero, and Ethereum Traditional (an previous variant that also makes use of hashing).
Whole annual manufacturing is thus $11.8 billion together with transaction charges that are working lower than one % of the block reward complete. They’re within the vary of $0.086 billion per 12 months.
Hashrate and Problem
Over the total historical past Bitcoin hashrate has grown because the eleventh energy of Bitcoin age however with vital variability. The expansion was quicker early on, amplified by the swap from CPUs to GPUs to SHA-256 custom-made ASICs adopted by speedy development within the ASIC designs.
For the previous variety of years the speed of development seems to have slowed to across the fifth or sixth energy of age, nonetheless very speedy.
Regardless of the slowing, the problem stage is now round 125 trillion (dimensionless models) having began from issue equal to 1, and the current stage corresponds to a worldwide hashrate on the Zettascale stage (10²¹ hashes/second). As of mid-June, 2026 the 30 day common is 0.95 Zettahash/sec.
Power
Bitcoin miners have at all times pursued the bottom price electrical energy inputs. The newest extensively cited figures from the Cambridge Centre for Different Finance (CCAF) and its 2025 Cambridge Digital Mining Trade Report are:
Annual Bitcoin electrical energy consumption: ~138 TWh/12 months (common of twenty-two GigaWatts)Share of worldwide electrical energy consumption: ~0.5percentSustainable power share: 52.4% complete sustainable sources: 42.6% renewables, 9.8% nuclearNatural gasoline share: 38.2% (now the biggest single supply)
Bitcoin mining is ready to attain distant and stranded power sources together with pure gasoline and flared and vented methane, even landfill methane, and may mitigate atmospheric air pollution. Hydroelectric sources are superb, together with wind and photo voltaic in distant places. Bitcoin mining rigs might be dropped in adjoining to the sources since low-bandwidth Web connections are enough.
Bitcoin mining was as soon as severely criticized for power utilization, but it surely has by no means reached 1% of worldwide electrical energy and the considerations have shifted to knowledge middle necessities. Bitcoin inputs are greener than datacenter at this level.
Daniel Batten is among the finest voices round selling Bitcoin’s function in stabilizing power grids. He argues — fairly efficiently — that Bitcoin mining needs to be seen not merely as electrical energy consumption, however as a versatile, interruptible power infrastructure layer that may stabilize grids, monetize stranded power, soak up renewable overbuild, and enhance the economics of recent energy technology tasks.
“As a result of Bitcoin mining is the one power person on the planet the place a gargantuan 80% of working prices are spent on energy, Bitcoin mining models are typically the one enterprise for whom it’s worthwhile to hunt and destroy methane and use it for energy in distant locations with poor Web connectivity, the place the capital prices to make the most of that methane are excessive.” — Daniel Batten
Mining is more and more seen not merely as:
power consumption,
but additionally as:
versatile interruptible load,artificial demand response,and financial storage for stranded or intermittent power.
The literature and utility discussions now incessantly body mining as:
“digital battery” infrastructure,particularly for renewables.
It is a main conceptual shift in comparison with the older environmental critique period.
From the Hashrate Index of 5/21/26: “Texas hosts a big share of worldwide Bitcoin mining hashrate — roughly 17% as of mid-2026. When a big fraction of that capability curtails concurrently to keep away from a 4CP peak, the impact reveals up throughout a number of on-chain indicators…ERCOT’s 4 Coincident Peak (4CP) mechanism units a website’s transmission cost for the subsequent 12 months based mostly on its common load in the course of the 4 highest 15-minute system peaks throughout June–September.”
Bitcoin miners are in a position to rein of their power utilization far more shortly than different masses when there’s stress on the grid, their load is extremely modular, and it’s self-funding.
Mining Gear
China continues to dominate within the design of ASICs for Bitcoin minting methods, from corporations together with Bitmain, Canaan, and MicroBT. The fabs although are positioned in Taiwan (TSMC #1) and Korea (Samsung #2).
The forefront for Bitcoin minting ASIC methods is now closely hydro/liquid cooled:
Bitmain Antminer S23 and S21 Hydro,Bitdeer SealMiner collection,and comparable platforms.
The optimization goal has shifted from:
uncooked TH/s towards:Joules per terahash,thermal density,rack-scale cooling effectivity,and energy orchestration.
Mining more and more resembles HPC engineering, which is one motive why Bitcoin mining farms, together with their low electrical energy prices, are well-suited to host AI workloads as nicely.
Mining Distribution and Firms
In response to hashrateindex.com the US has 37% of worldwide hashrate (1/3 or extra of that 37% in West Texas), Russia 16%, and China 12%. Collectively the highest three nations are accountable for almost 2/3 of all hashrate. Different vital international locations within the prime 8 are Paraguay with 4%, Ethiopia, the UAE, Oman, and Canada with 3% every. That already provides as much as 80% of the hashrate being present in 8 international locations.
However this can be a substantial enchancment in decentralization, as previously China had been accountable for over 50% of worldwide hashrate; they cracked down 5 years in the past resulting from power considerations and capital flight considerations, and maybe to assist promote their very own digital forex. Hashrate following these restrictions moved particularly to the US and Russia.
Over 25% of the hashrate is operated by publicly traded corporations, largely within the US. The highest 10 are tabulated in Desk 3 and collectively have 279 Terahash/sec. (not all of which is working concurrently).
There’s a massive pivot underway for these corporations so as to add AI and HPC capability to stability out their income streams and earn increased margins. A number of structural observations for these corporations stand out:
1. The trade is more and more bifurcating into pure Bitcoin miners, and hybrid “energy + compute infrastructure” operators.
2. AI/HPC income is changing into materials in a short time. CoinShares projections cited in 2026 stories estimate that companies like Core Scientific, IREN, and TeraWulf may derive a majority of income from AI/HPC workloads inside a 12 months or two.
3. The important thing scarce asset is now not merely ASIC fleets; it is:
grid entry,substations,cooling infrastructure,and dispatchable megawatt-scale energy.
Bitcoin miners already possessed these property. The AI pivot monetizes them at a lot increased income multiples than SHA-256 mining alone.
4. Hashrate management at the moment stays concentrated in:
MARA,CleanSpark,Riot,IREN,and Core Scientific.
5. The AI pivot is starting to scale back marginal Bitcoin-network growth stress as a result of some power capability is being diverted from SHA-256 mining into GPU compute.
The biggest offers not too long ago:
Core Scientific remodeled itself from a distressed Bitcoin miner right into a premier AI/HPC infrastructure platform by means of huge long-term internet hosting agreements and its strategic relationship with CoreWeave. Deal dimension: $10 billion.IREN Restricted executed one of many sector’s largest AI pivots by leveraging its renewable-powered mining campuses into hyperscale AI cloud infrastructure tied to partnerships involving Microsoft and NVIDIA. Deal dimension: $10 billion.TeraWulf repositioned its energy-intensive mining operations towards AI compute and data-center leasing by means of main HPC agreements and partnerships with Fluidstack and Core42. Deal dimension: $4 billion.
Hashrate Index on 5/22/2026 wrote “Miners with present knowledge middle infrastructure, energy relationships, and cooling capability are positioned to take part within the AI infrastructure buildout as this market validates. Whether or not by means of mullet mining hybrid operations, direct GPU and ASIC colocation for neoclouds and enterprise AI clients, or full transition to AI compute infrastructure, the optionality is extra precious than it seems at first look. The AI chip sector’s $100 billion-plus annual CapEx has to land someplace bodily. Bitcoin mining operators personal quite a lot of the bodily infrastructure it wants.”
The Bitcoin balances held by miners have been reducing of late as they pivot towards AI. They’ve bought a few of their Bitcoin as wanted for ‘pores and skin within the recreation’ as a part of new financing packages for AI infrastructure buildout.
BTC in Treasuries
The web shopping for of Bitcoin has been primarily by means of ETFs and Treasury corporations in recent times, largely as custodians for his or her purchasers and shareholders. The quantity held in these corporations and funds has been rising quicker than the fourth energy of Bitcoin’s age.
At the moment ETFs and exchanges maintain over 1.6 million Bitcoin, some 8% of the 20 million Bitcoin minted to date.
Public corporations maintain 1.26 million Bitcoin in keeping with bitcointreasuries.internet
Technique alone holds over 840,000 Bitcoin, which is 4% of the utmost 21 million provide.
Governments maintain 650,000 or 3% of provide, with the highest three being the US with over 300,000 BTC, China with 190,000 BTC, whereas the UK and Ukraine maintain about 61,000 and 46,000 respectively.
Non-public corporations together with BlockOne, Tether, and SpaceX maintain round 282,000 BTC and a few 380,000 is locked into DeFi protocols.
Nonetheless the huge bulk of Bitcoin seems to be in personal arms and people are the helpful house owners of ETF holdings and treasury firm holdings for essentially the most half.
Supercomputing Comparability
Within the fifteenth report I in contrast the Bitcoin decentralized supercomputing minting community to the world’s quickest laptop, El Capitan, and to the High 500 record of supercomputers.
El Capitan has a peak efficiency of 1.74 Exaflops (the unit is a billion billion floating level operations), and consists of 11 million GPU and CPU cores. It consumes 30–35 MegaWatts, which is of order 10,000 instances as a lot as a typical Bitcoin mining rig. The price is $600 million and the science mission is of crucial nationwide significance.
However it might be of little use as a crypto mining system. How briskly may it hash Dogecoin? The Scrypt algorithm is designed to be extremely reminiscence intensive, and the Scrypt ASICS have their total die as basically one large SRAM scratchpad with a tiny compute wrapper round it. It’s estimated that El Capitan would mine roughly $47 price of Dogecoin per day — lower than a single Antminer L9 ASIC (~17 TH/s, ~$14,000) optimized for Scrypt. The reminiscence hierarchy mismatch is completely brutal for Scrypt on HPC silicon.
How about Bitcoin’s doubled SHA-256 algorithm? It’s about 75% bitwise logic and 25% 32-bit integer. Adopting generously 3 Exaops peak, and noting there are 1600 ops roughly within the the double SHA-256 hashing spherical, we’re lower than 2 Petahashes/sec. That is similar to solely 2 to 4 ASIC mining rigs from Desk 2. Greater than one million such of the very newest ASIC hashing methods can be required to provide the worldwide hash fee.
Bitcoin ASICs are multi-module, extremely pipelined, and really extremely parallel in replicating practical models, and likewise acquire huge benefit as a result of they:
hardwire the precise dataflow,get rid of instruction decode,get rid of caches,get rid of reminiscence hierarchy overhead,get rid of department/management logic,deeply pipeline the precise rotate/XOR/add construction,and maximize hashes/Joule fairly than generic ops/sec.
There’s a profound safety assertion right here — the financial and thermodynamic funding embodied within the Bitcoin community’s hashrate is now so massive that even nation-state supercomputing infrastructure is irrelevant to it. The community’s safety is anchored to cumulative power and extremely particular ASIC hashrate expenditure, to not any single machine’s compute ceiling.
It’s additionally price noting that Bitcoin miners crossed the Zettahash threshold (~10²¹ hashes/sec) quietly and with little fanfare, whereas the HPC group remains to be celebrating Exascale (~10¹⁸ FLOPs) as a frontier achievement. Bitcoin’s proof-of-work has outpaced civilian supercomputing by three orders of magnitude — a outstanding emergent property of the self-organizing nature of the Nakamoto consensus.
Quantum Threat
There are two areas of threat from quantum computing for the Bitcoin community. First one should comment that quantum computing is a threat to your entire monetary system and quite a few quantum protected key mechanisms exist already, nevertheless they’re dearer to implement.
One threat is many a long time away, and that might be Grover’s algorithm permitting quantum computer systems to generate SHA-256 hashes. However the clock charges of at the moment’s quantum computer systems are very gradual so this isn’t a practical risk for a very long time to come back. And on the finish of the day it might simply be one other set of methods mining Bitcoin and processing transactions on the community, not a method to steal cash.
The extra speedy threat within the 5 to twenty 12 months timeframe (and it’s that unsure) is from Shor’s algorithm. It has the potential to threaten 256-bit keys as soon as there’s a machine with of order 1000 logical qubits in a position to crack a public key in the course of the 10 minutes that transactions are sitting within the mempool ready for processing.
Shor’s algorithm would derive a personal key from an uncovered public key. Early Bitcoin output transactions from earlier than 2012 expose the general public keys always (P2PK) however since then most transactions solely expose keys whereas they’re being spent, inside a single block length. An essential apply is to not reuse addresses; as a substitute generate a brand new handle for every switch.
Glassnode Analysis estimates 9.6% of issued provide is uncovered by means of script constructions for which public keys are seen on the blockchain.
Present estimates are that it’ll take 500,000 to 1,000,000 or extra bodily qubits as a way to have sufficient coherently entangled logical qubits for Shor’s algorithm to succeed. There was very energetic progress in decreasing the bodily to logical ratio, and that must be monitored.
However there are already a number of NIST authorised quantum-safe key algorithms, it’s primarily a matter of migrating Bitcoin and keys to quantum protected wallets. Quite a few BIPs (Bitcoin enchancment proposals) are in varied phases of debate and progress to deal with the challenge.
Very previous cash that haven’t moved, equivalent to Satoshi’s 1 million cash unfold throughout a lot of wallets, stay weak and there’s debate as as to if to freeze or throttle these or simply allow them to sit as an early warning system, the potential trillion greenback canary within the coal mine if Bitcoin’s value retains following its long run steep energy legislation trajectory.
Outlook
The Bitcoin mining trade is coming into a brand new section of its maturation. The massive publicly traded miners are more and more evolving into hybrid power, AI, and excessive efficiency computing infrastructure corporations fairly than remaining pure-play SHA-256 minting companies. Sarcastically, this pivot could create extra alternative for decentralization inside Bitcoin mining itself. As massive companies divert parts of their capital expenditure and electrical capability towards GPU clusters and AI internet hosting, smaller and mid-sized operators could regain competitiveness in SHA-256 mining. On the identical time, nation-states seem more and more more likely to broaden their participation, whether or not by means of sovereign reserve accumulation, home mining initiatives, grid-balancing purposes, or strategic power monetization.
Bitcoin’s volatility has clearly been declining, roughly in inverse proportion to Bitcoin’s age, regardless of periodic extreme drawdowns. This moderation is essential as a result of it alleviates stress on miners, treasury corporations, lenders, and custodial establishments. A much less unstable Bitcoin is simpler to finance, simpler to collateralize, and extra suitable with sovereign and institutional stability sheets. If Bitcoin continues transitioning from a speculative rising asset towards a worldwide reserve settlement layer, declining volatility could finally show extra essential than short-term value appreciation alone. Certainly, declining volatility permits for bigger and extra threat acutely aware tiers of capital to take part.
The following halving, anticipated in Q2 2028, will cut back the block subsidy from 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC per block and decrease Bitcoin financial inflation from roughly 0.8% now right down to 0.4% yearly. Traditionally every halving has intensified aggressive stress inside mining whereas concurrently reinforcing Bitcoin’s shortage narrative. The approaching cycle could also be notably fascinating as a result of it should happen in a world the place ETFs, treasury corporations, sovereign entities, AI infrastructure operators, and power markets at the moment are deeply entangled with the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Quantum computing stays a long-term engineering concern fairly than a right away existential risk. Present proof means that sensible assaults towards uncovered Bitcoin public keys are unlikely to develop into operationally vital till someday within the subsequent decade, and even then just for a subset of weak legacy wallets and handle constructions. A number of quantum-safe signature methods exist already, and the Bitcoin ecosystem has substantial time emigrate towards safer cryptographic requirements. In apply, quantum threat shouldn’t be distinctive to Bitcoin; it applies broadly to the worldwide monetary, governmental, and Web safety infrastructure.
Bitcoin minting will proceed to develop into extra built-in into the worldwide power infrastructure.
In Daniel Batten’s view: “The way forward for Bitcoin mining is that it seeks out stranded power at close to zero marginal price. The way forward for Bitcoin mining is that it stabilizes grids and recycles warmth as a major income supply, with the block reward and charges being the by-product. The way forward for Bitcoin mining is that it solves arduous issues the world desperately wants — maintaining our grid protected and secure, making AI load versatile, decreasing dangerous methane air pollution, stopping the wasteful apply of renewable power curtailment in ways in which profit complete communities.”
Extra broadly, Bitcoin mining is starting to resemble a brand new class of commercial infrastructure altogether: half financial community, half energy-balancing layer, half distributed supercomputing material, and half geopolitical reserve system. The community’s scale now exceeds civilian supercomputing by a number of orders of magnitude in uncooked cryptographic throughput, whereas concurrently integrating itself into electrical grids, capital markets, sovereign methods, and AI datacenter growth. What started as an experimental peer-to-peer forex has advanced right into a planetary-scale thermodynamic and computational system whose long-term implications are nonetheless solely starting to emerge.
CryptoSuper Report #16 — June 2026 was initially printed in The Capital on Medium, the place individuals are persevering with the dialog by highlighting and responding to this story.
