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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.

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.

$82B

Sage D. Young4h

Crypto money laundering activity totaled more than $82 billion in 2025, more than 8x higher than 2020’s figure of $10 billion, according to a Tuesday report published by crypto analytics firm Chainalysis. Chinese-language networks dominated the ecosystem, accounting for roughly 20% of the illicit activity, or $16.1 billion, last year:

“Compared to other laundering endpoints, since 2020, inflows to identified CMLNs [Chinese-langugage money laundering networks] grew 7,325 times faster than those to centralized exchanges, 1,810 times faster than those to decentralized finance (DeFi), and 2,190 times faster than intra-illicit on-chain flows.”

Tom Keatinge, director at the Centre for Finance & Security at security think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Chainalysis that the rapid development of Chinese-language networks is an “an unforeseen consequence” of China’s imposition of capital controls.

“Wealthy individuals seeking to move money out of China and evade these controls provide the impetus and liquidity pool needed to service organized crime groups based in the West,” he noted.

Keatinge told Chainalysis, “The professional enablers of this capital flight provide the services necessary to match these two independent yet mutually beneficial needs.”

Chinese-language networks offer six primary money movement techniques to clean dirty money, which include recruiting individuals to rent out their financial identities, selling illicit cryptocurrency at a discounted rate, and obscuring fund origins through multiple transactions.

Overall, this Chinese ecosystem processed nearly $44 million per day last year.

Sage D. Young1/26/26

Avalanche joins class of cryptocurrencies with at least one ETF

Investment management company VanEck on Monday introduced the first exchange-traded fund offering spot exposure to AVAX, the native token for the Avalanche blockchain and the latest cryptocurrency with an ETF.

The new investment vehicle also aims to provide staking rewards for holders, according to the press release. AVAX, which has seen over $354 million in trading volume in the last 24 hours, is up slightly today. The token is trading at $11.70 as of 1:20 p.m. ET, a far cry from its all-time high of $144.96 in 2021.

The nascent VanEck fund joins a group of its crypto-specific ETFs, including the firm’s bitcoin ETF, with $1.4 billion in total assets; its ethereum ETF, which holds $147.5 million; and its solana ETF, with assets totaling $27.9 million.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

1/26/26

Fears grow that bitcoin is entering a bear market

“While a new all-time high this year still isn’t out of the question, the next 30 days will be crucial in determining whether a bear market is already here.”

Sage D. Young1/23/26

Ethereum treasury firm ETHZilla acquires two aircraft engines (!?!?) in tokenization push

ETHZilla, known for its ethereum treasury, formed a new subsidiary and purchased aerospace equipment in a bid to boost the company’s tokenization efforts.

The treasury firm, through its nascent subsidiary ETHZilla Aerospace LLC, “acquired two CFM56-7B24 aircraft engines, together with all parts, engine records and engine stands” for $12.2 million from Avean Engine Solutions, according to an 8K filing on Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The two aircraft engines are subject to lease agreements with a major airline, which were assigned to ETHZilla as part of the acquisition, the filing stated.

The firm’s top priority in 2026 is growing its real-world asset tokenization business and is keen on rolling out RWA tokens in the first quarter, an ETHZilla representative told Sherwood News at the beginning of the year.

ETHZilla’s acquisition of two aircraft engines is part of this tokenization road map, which aims to bring real-world assets from high-value vertical markets, such as aerospace, maritime, and heavy equipment, on-chain.

“In the heavy equipment market, we will initially focus on aerospace assets such as aircraft engines and airframes to tokenize,” ETHZilla Chairman and CEO McAndrew Rudisill said in his shareholder letter from December. “This represents a large, growing market with quality high-yielding assets, and we believe it is a very attractive space for tokenization.”

Sage D. Young1/22/26

XRP spot ETFs on pace to record first-ever weekly outflow

Spot XRP ETFs are on track to notch a weekly outflow for the first time since their inception in November 2025. The week’s flows turned negative on Tuesday when the investment vehicles saw over $53 million leave the funds.

Prior to this week, spot XRP ETFs had averaged $127.5 million in weekly inflows, a figure lifted by the fund’s first day of trading, which had $243 million worth of inflows, according to SoSoValue.

The funds’ ongoing pace comes as XRP has shed nearly 20% from its 2026 high of $2.39 to trade at a lower price than when the ETFs launched.

XRP is in “Extreme Fear” territory, per social data from blockchain analytics firm Santiment. “Small retail traders have become pessimistic toward the #5 market cap cryptocurrency after a -19% drop since the high back on January 5th,” Santiment wrote. The firm told Sherwood News, “If we reach levels of bearishness that we were seeing back on November 20-21, 2025, it would be an indication that a major bounce is likely.”

Bitcoin miners hit with downgrades, winter storm

More Crypto

Avalanche joins class of cryptocurrencies with at least one ETF

Ethereum treasury firm ETHZilla acquires two aircraft engines (!?!?) in tokenization push

XRP spot ETFs on pace to record first-ever weekly outflow

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