Bitcoin's network hashrate has climbed to its highest level in seven months, even as major publicly traded miners redirect capacity toward artificial intelligence — a sign that other operators are stepping in to replace the lost computing power and that competition among the network's remaining miners is intensifying.

According to BlocksBridge Consulting's latest Miner Weekly newsletter, Bitcoin's seven-day average hashrate has recovered above 1 zettahash per second (ZH/s) — equivalent to 1,000 exahashes per second (EH/s) — its highest level since March 3. Hashrate measures the computing power dedicated to securing the Bitcoin network.

The rebound indicates that operators still mining Bitcoin are getting little relief from competitive pressure, despite the industry's ongoing pivot toward AI workloads. Bitcoin's mining difficulty rose 5.92 on Oct. 16, and BlocksBridge projects a further 5.16% increase at the next adjustment. Should that estimate hold, difficulty will have climbed roughly 11.4% across two consecutive adjustments. Bitcoin's protocol recalibrates difficulty every 2,016 blocks — roughly every two weeks — to keep block production close to its 10-minute target, and because the network's issuance is tied to block production rather than to how much computing power competes for it, each increase means every unit of hashrate captures a smaller expected share of newly issued rewards. Whether the projected 5.16% adjustment materializes will be the clearest near-term indicator of how much displaced capacity is still finding its way back onto the network.

"That's hardly the breathing room remaining miners might have expected from the AI migration," BlocksBridge wrote, referring to the mounting competition facing operators that have continued mining Bitcoin.

The shift toward AI has already taken substantial mining capacity offline. BlocksBridge previously reported a 23% decline in publicly traded miners' realized hashrate, alongside a 52% quarterly increase in their reported revenue from AI and high-performance computing. The firm estimated that the displaced capacity represented roughly $1.5 billion worth of mining hardware.

Smaller miners may be picking up the slack

Part of the lost capacity may be returning to the network as smaller and mid-sized miners purchase equipment from larger operators. BlocksBridge pointed to Sazmining, which advertises secondhand Antminer S21 XP machines that buyers can deploy through hosting facilities in Paraguay and Texas.

For miners with access to cheaper electricity, acquiring used machines can be more economical than investing in new equipment. It also means hardware displaced by AI conversions could continue mining Bitcoin elsewhere. It remains unclear, however, how much of the equipment being sold actually originates from publicly traded miners, or how much of it has returned to the network.

The hashrate recovery comes as some industry observers treat rising computing power as an "indirect bullish signal" for Bitcoin, reflecting continued institutional investment in publicly traded mining companies. CryptoQuant founder and CEO Ki Young Ju recently made that argument on X, writing that "higher hashrate means stronger security and better fundamentals as a store of value."