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A worker installs a new row of bitcoin-mining machines (Mark Felix/Getty Images)

Bitcoin miners hit with downgrades, winter storm

While the bitcoin hashrate has crashed, experts say this is a temporary reaction to the weather.

1/27/26 12:23PM

Amid mounting fears that bitcoin is entering a bear market, bitcoin miners are also facing challenges, including difficult pivots to AI and a winter storm that forced some miners to shutter their operations.

KBW analyst Stephen Glagola downgraded several companies, including Bitfarms, Bitdeer, and HIVE, to “market perform” from “outperform.” The stocks all dipped in early trading but recovered those losses in Tuesday’s session.

Several bitcoin miners have pivoted to AI to mitigate losses from bitcoin’s lackluster performance and secure steadier cash inflows, but not all have been able to transition successfully.

CoinDesk reported that Glagola’s downgrades were driven by the fact that “while the industry’s pivot toward high-performance computing (HPC) and AI hosting is compelling, the path to monetization is fraught with execution risks and long lead times.”

Specifically, CoinDesk noted:

Bitfarms: “The market has already priced in the potential of its 120-megawatt (MW) Sharon, Pennsylvania, site.”
Bitdeer: Its current small scale, concentrated shareholder control, and “related-party exposure” were marked as a concern.
HIVE: Its reliance on partners makes it “sub-optimally positioned” next to pure-play data center competitors.

Additionally, the winter storm currently battering the US is putting pressure on their operations.

SwanDesk CEO Jacob King posted on X that bitcoin’s hashrate has crashed to 690 exahashes per second from 1.13 zetahashes per second in just two days, “the largest drop ever recorded.”

“Large numbers of miners have powered down their machines. With prices falling and operating costs fixed, many will be forced to sell BTC to stay solvent, accelerating the downward spiral,” King wrote.

Timot Lamarre, director of market research at Unchained, told Sherwood News that given the prevalence of bitcoin miners in Texas and the ability to curtail power usage by switching off when demand drives energy prices higher, the dip in bitcoin hashrate is likely temporary.

Jessy Gilger, a senior adviser at Gannett Wealth Advisors, said that this record drop in hashrate isn’t a network collapse.

“Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment is a built-in balancing factor that has managed these fluctuations for 17 years, and the network will inevitably stabilize as the weather clears,” he said.

Sage D. Young17h

Bitcoin sees 8 consecutive days of gains, a streak not seen in 4 years

Bitcoin is on a winning streak. The cryptocurrency has generated eight straight days of positive returns, a rare phenomenon that has occurred only 15 times since Satoshi Nakamoto created it, according to a CoinDesk report.

In the 30 days after posting an eight-day streak, bitcoin traded higher nine times and lower six times. The median return in the period is roughly 19%. Despite the historical gains that followed, the last time bitcoin had such a rally, four years ago, it dropped roughly 30%.

Most recently, bitcoin climbed from below $66,000 on March 8 to over $75,000 yesterday before settling around $73,800 on Tuesday morning.

Traders remain modestly bullish on the likelihood of further gains, though the sentiment is fading: prediction market-implied odds of bitcoin trading above $77,500 in the month stand at 54%, a decrease from 73% on Monday.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Bitcoin hits rare 8-day winning streak – but 2022 bear market saw one too

Most recently, bitcoin climbed from below $66,000 on March 8 to over $75,000 yesterday before settling around $73,800 on Tuesday morning.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy19h

Another miner sells its bitcoin

Despite bitcoin being on the rebound, another bitcoin miner sold a chunk of its holdings to further its pivot to AI. In February, Cango, a former automotive service, said it sold 4,451 bitcoin in favor of AI, just a year after becoming a miner. The company said it used the proceeds of the sale to pay down long-term debt and “reduce the overall finance leverage and strengthen the balance sheet,” according to its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings release.

Shares were up 4.5% in premarket trading.

Cango recorded a net loss from continuing operations of $452.8 million in 2025, “primarily due to non-recurring transformation costs and market-driven fair-value adjustments,” it said.

Its “adjusted bitcoin treasury policy” will “provide the financial flexibility needed to navigate volatility and invest in high-potential areas like AI infrastructure,” Cango said.

Bitcoin’s earlier downward trajectory has pressured several miners, which are choosing to pivot to AI and sell their assets or exit the business entirely.

Cango’s move follows Core Scientific, which sold over 1,900 bitcoin for $175 million in January as it shifts even more of its focus to the AI data center boom.

As bitcoin mining economics “have gone from bad to worse,” companies pivot and sell to survive

Shares were up 4.5% in premarket trading.

Cango recorded a net loss from continuing operations of $452.8 million in 2025, “primarily due to non-recurring transformation costs and market-driven fair-value adjustments,” it said.

Its “adjusted bitcoin treasury policy” will “provide the financial flexibility needed to navigate volatility and invest in high-potential areas like AI infrastructure,” Cango said.

Bitcoin’s earlier downward trajectory has pressured several miners, which are choosing to pivot to AI and sell their assets or exit the business entirely.

Cango’s move follows Core Scientific, which sold over 1,900 bitcoin for $175 million in January as it shifts even more of its focus to the AI data center boom.

Sage D. Young

3/16/26

Ethereum extends rally as BitMine continues buying spree

The largest ethereum treasury firm, BitMine Immersion Technologies, added $139.7 million worth of tokens to its stockpile.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

3/16/26

Bitcoin continues to climb despite war with Iran, oil price shock

Sage D. Young3/13/26

Ethereum hits highest price in over a month as BlackRock joins the fray of ethereum staking ETFs

Ethereum climbed to its highest level in over a month on Friday, briefly touching $2,200. The price swing comes amid a new change among ETFs focused on the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Yesterday, ETHB — BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF — started trading on the Nasdaq, making the investment vehicle the first from the financial titan to include staking, the process of locking up tokens to help secure the network’s consensus mechanism in exchange for rewards.

The nascent staking ETF has nearly $150 million in net assets, drawing in $43.5 million in inflows on its first day, data from SoSoValue shows. “Pretty good start for any ETF,” Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart wrote in a social media post.

While ETHB is BlackRock’s first ethereum staking ETF, it’s not the first to market. The Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF launched in 2024, while the Rex-Osprey ETH Staking ETF rolled out last year.

Ethereum ETFs have seen nearly $157.7 million of inflows in March, on track to record their first monthly inflow since October.

Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation published its mandate, “a document that serves as part constitution, part manifesto, and part guide for the Ethereum Foundation,” on Friday.

“Our Mandate to EF states what must be cherished to protect the ultimate reason for Ethereum’s existence: user self-sovereignty,” the Ethereum Foundation board wrote. “To be a part of EF, our own teams must remember that Ethereum must, above all, remain censorship resistant, open source, private, and secure (CROPS).”

The mandate is a new chapter in how the organization views its position in the world, according to ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin. “We must see ourselves not just as the Ethereum community, but also as maintainers of the Ethereum tool within what you might call the CROPS community,” Buterin said. “This means open-mindedness to new conceptions of what things in the world are our natural allies.”