What happens to all the mining hardware? repurposed for AI?
The network security model then relies entirely on fee incentives. If transaction volume remains high enough, miners stay profitable. If not, hash power could decrease, which might affect security assumptions.
As for hardware: most modern BTC mining uses ASICs, which are highly specialized and not practical for AI workloads. They’re optimized for SHA-256 hashing and can’t be easily repurposed. GPUs, on the other hand, can be redirected to AI or other compute-heavy tasks.
The bigger open question is whether the long-term fee market will be sufficient to sustain miner incentives without block subsidies.