Bitcoin halving 2028: Who will still be mining?

Traders Union
All News
Editors' Picks
Bitcoin halving 2028

Miners aren't waiting for 2028

Bitcoin's fifth halving is expected around April 2028. The precise date depends on how quickly blocks are mined, but the reduction will happen at block 1,050,000.

View post on X Loading...

The tweet was deleted by the author.

But we saved everything 🙂.

Some miners are already making the choice that could become more common as 2028 approaches. Keel Infrastructure, formerly Bitfarms, has decommissioned all of its U.S. Bitcoin mining operations as it prepares the sites for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers. Its second-quarter revenue fell 50% year over year to $30 million.

At its Moses Lake site in Washington, the transformation is strikingly literal. “The Bitcoin mine that stood there before is gone, completely removed,” CEO Ben Gagnon told investors. The site is now being redeveloped for AI infrastructure.

AI is offering miners another business

Bitcoin miners spent years securing something the AI industry now desperately needs: electricity. Large mining sites already have land, power agreements and grid connections. Converting them into AI data centers is neither simple nor cheap, but those assets can give miners a head start in an industry where access to power has become a major constraint.

The shift is already substantial. CoinShares estimates that publicly listed miners could derive as much as 70% of their revenue from AI by the end of 2026, up from roughly 30% today. During 2025 and early 2026, miners signed more than $70 billion worth of GPU colocation and cloud-service deals with hyperscalers.

“What began as a marginal diversification strategy is increasingly becoming the core business,” CoinShares said. Mining margins have been squeezed while AI infrastructure can offer higher and more predictable returns. If a megawatt is worth more serving an AI customer than mining Bitcoin, companies have a strong incentive to put that power elsewhere, particularly with another halving approaching.

Why miners can survive another halving

Another 50% reduction in the block subsidy does not necessarily make Bitcoin mining unviable because profitability depends on much more than the number of new coins miners receive. Bitcoin's price matters, as do electricity costs, transaction fees and the efficiency of mining machines. A sufficiently large rise in Bitcoin's price could offset much of the impact of the halving.

Bitcoin can also adapt when miners leave. If enough machines switch off and hashrate falls, mining difficulty eventually adjusts downward, reducing competition for those that remain. Previous halvings have pushed less efficient miners out while newer machines replaced older ones and activity shifted toward cheaper electricity.

Who will still mine Bitcoin?

Companies with exceptionally cheap electricity and efficient machines are in the strongest position. CoinShares estimates that under recent mining conditions, operators using older equipment generally need electricity below roughly five cents per kilowatt-hour to remain cash-profitable, while newer machines leave considerably more room. Mining can also work where electricity would otherwise be wasted or becomes cheap only at certain times, since miners can switch machines off when power prices rise and restart them when conditions improve.

At the opposite end of the industry are miners for whom maximizing profit was never the entire point. Home and solo mining remain tiny compared with industrial operations, but compact open-source machines have made it possible to mine Bitcoin from a desk rather than a warehouse. In August, a solo miner found Bitcoin block 960,804 and collected 3.157 BTC, worth roughly $200,000 at the time. Solo miners had already found 13 blocks in 2026.

Such wins are exceptionally rare, and a small solo miner can statistically wait thousands of years to find a block. But enthusiasts may have other reasons to keep mining, from participating directly in Bitcoin to reusing the heat their machines produce, giving home mining very different economics from a public company deciding whether Bitcoin or AI offers the better use of its electricity.

What will Bitcoin mining look like in 2028?

The next halving is likely to put more pressure on the middle of the mining industry. The most efficient operators can survive by squeezing costs and securing cheap power, while companies with valuable data-center infrastructure have an increasingly attractive alternative in AI. Enthusiasts, meanwhile, may continue mining on an entirely different scale and for very different reasons. Bitcoin mining may survive just fine, even if the people doing it look very different.

This material may contain third-party opinions, none of the data and information on this webpage constitutes investment advice according to our Disclaimer. While we adhere to strict Editorial Integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners.