Bitcoin Miners Pivot to AI as Price Falls to $60K and Hashprice Hits Record Low

Bitcoin suffered a sharp 21% one-day drop to $60,000 on May 20, driving hashprice to an all-time low of $28.90 per PH/day and triggering widespread margin compression. This follows May 19 reports of elevated production costs near $86,944 per BTC and large-scale liquidations by single-coin operators such as MARA, which sold roughly 18,519 BTC. Public miners controlling about 40% of hashrate are now converting ASIC capacity to GPUs for AI workloads, a shift that may decentralize the network while long-term block-subsidy erosion raises concerns that BTC would need to reach $272,000 by 2036 to sustain current economics.