Foundry USA Makes Strategic Hashrate Cuts Ahead of Brutal Winter - Mining Giant Prepares for Extreme Conditions

One of North America's largest Bitcoin mining operations just pulled back its computational power—voluntarily. Foundry USA, a dominant force in the hashrate landscape, is proactively reducing its mining output as severe winter weather looms.

The Preemptive Power-Down

This isn't a reaction to low Bitcoin prices or regulatory pressure. It's a calculated move against Mother Nature. By slashing hashrate now, Foundry aims to ensure grid stability and secure operational continuity for its facilities when freezing temperatures hit hardest. Think of it as a miner battening down the hatches before the storm.

Winter-Proofing the Network

The strategy highlights a mature, institutional approach to mining. Instead of running full-tilt until forced offline, Foundry is managing its energy demand preemptively. This flexibility—curtailing operations to support local grids—is becoming a key marker of a responsible, large-scale miner. It turns a potential vulnerability into a demonstration of resilience.

The Bigger, Colder Picture

Seasonal adjustments are now part of the mining playbook. For publicly traded mining firms, these operational tweaks will soon show up in quarterly earnings, giving analysts fresh metrics to dissect—hashrate volatility due to weather might just become another line item for the spreadsheet jockeys. After all, what's a little climate risk between profitable exahashes?

Foundry's move signals that the industry's growth phase is maturing into an era of sophisticated operational management. The ability to throttle back, not just scale up, could define which miners survive the next cycle—whether it's driven by crypto winters or the actual, freezing kind.

Lower hashrate leads to lower difficulty

One silver lining of slower mining is that block production may become easier, resulting in higher rewards for some pools. Difficulty slid to a three-month low after the last two recalculation periods happened during a period of slower mining. 

While the change may be seasonal, lowered difficulty may alleviate the current mining distress. 

Miners keep producing blocks even as the hash ribbon indicator is flashing. The slide of BTC to $86,000 extended the period of distress for miners. The mining sector is closing in on two months of mining under distress conditions, as BTC moved down from its all-time high. 

Average cost to mine one BTC is now close to $75,000, serving as a price floor. However, some miners have lower costs, while new hardware may mean a more competitive advantage for newer mining farms. 

Is mining the bridge to AI?

While mining starts to look non-viable under distress, mining companies are still winning. The sector leader IREN is up over 21% in 2026, rising to $45.91. Riot Platforms (RIOT) also retained some of its gains, reaching $17.28.

All BTC mining operations retain access to relatively reliable sources of energy. As a result, some miners are still viable, while others are working toward AI and other forms of compute with a higher margin. 

BTC miners have been divesting some of their reserves, with 1.89M BTC left in storage. Despite this, the selling is relatively slow, while the daily reward of 450 BTC is easily absorbed by the market.

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