Bitcoin (BTC) Hash Rate Recovers to 1.06 ZH/s, 6.5% From Record

Hash Rate Back Within 6.5% of Its Record

Bitcoin (BTC) price trades near $79,774, down 0.8% over 24 hours and roughly 37% below its $126,210 peak, yet the computing power protecting the network is closing in on its own record. On-chain data puts the 14-day moving average of hash rate at about 1.06 zettahashes per second (ZH/s), only 6.5% below the peak set in late 2025. On-chain analyst Will Clemente flagged the move on X, saying the metric is nearly back at record levels even as miners shift toward artificial intelligence.

The earlier drawdown gives the rebound scale. The 14-day average topped out at a late-2025 peak near 1.135 zettahashes per second, then fell about 22% between October 2025 and February 2026, the longest mining decline on record. The slide stalled near 870 exahashes per second (EH/s). The metric bounced in February, returned to that floor in June and once more in August, and every test held. In hindsight, the August retest marked the floor rather than another step down, and the current leg higher is the sharpest since February's rebound.

Mining difficulty confirms the turn. The network climbed 5.92% on October 16 to 140.58 trillion (T), per mempool data. A further increase of roughly 5% to 6% is projected for October 29, which would lift the reading to about 148T to 150T, within 4% to 5% of the all-time high of 155.97T set in late October 2025. Difficulty slid from that peak to roughly 126T by February and bottomed at 124.93T in June after the year's largest cut, 10.09%. Two consecutive jumps of this size stand out in 2026, when most adjustments were reductions.

Riot, IREN and a $70 Billion AI Pivot

Listed miners have not stopped leaving. Riot Platforms disclosed a 20-year hosting agreement on August 10 covering 191 megawatts at its Rockdale, Texas campus, worth $9.1 billion and up to $16.1 billion with extensions. Reports have named Anthropic as the client, though Riot has not identified the customer. An October press report indicated IREN signed a multiyear cloud deal with Anthropic, which neither company has confirmed. IREN is also leaving mining, with a plan to shut down roughly 23.2 EH/s of capacity before December 31.

The gap shows up in the aggregates. The realized hash rate of public miners dropped 15% in the first half of 2026, according to a BlocksBridge Consulting tally, while announced AI and high-performance computing (HPC) deals across listed firms now exceed $70 billion. A CoinShares estimate puts annual billing on that backlog at only about $1.1 billion so far. ViaBTC CEO Haipo Yang has argued that AI demand is pushing mining out of the most expensive sites.

Replacement capacity is coming from private and international operators. Bitdeer, the clearest exception among listed firms, lifted its self-mining hash rate to 82.3 EH/s in September from 35 EH/s a year earlier. BlocksBridge suggests rigs retired by public companies are being bought by smaller operators with cheap power. Luxor tied September's recovery mainly to Texas fleets coming back online after the state grid's final summer peak passed on September 12. The geographic spread of Bitcoin (BTC) mining is wider too: data from Hashrate Index shows Ethiopia's hash rate up 129% year over year in the first quarter, Paraguay up 54% and Oman up 28%. Price helped as well. BTC recovered toward the $85,000 production cost JPMorgan estimated, in late September, and the Hash Ribbons indicator from Capriole marked the end of miner capitulation on August 27.

Security Near Record Cost, Margins Under Strain

Hash rate is the raw material of proof of work, distinct from the blockchain node layer that validates blocks but equally central to the security model. At a level within 6.5% of its peak, attacking the ledger costs about as much as it ever has, and the ownership of that power is more dispersed than a year ago, spread across private operators and new regions. The pressure now sits on miners themselves: hashprice, the daily revenue per petahash, slipped to about $36 on October 25, down roughly 11% in a month, so further difficulty increases will compress margins unless Bitcoin (BTC) climbs. IREN's December exit could remove meaningful capacity alongside that squeeze. CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju called the uptrend an indirect bullish signal in his October 22 post, and our Bitcoin technical analysis keeps the focus on whether price holds near $79,774 while difficulty grinds toward 148T.

@ki_young_ju · X post

His October 22 post.

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