Bitcoin spent much of 2026's first half trailing stock indices despite hitting record highs in equities. Researchers at Schwab and Hashdex attributed the gap partly to AI's pull on institutional capital, a draw powerful enough to keep digital assets in a holding pattern even as traditional markets rallied.
The timing overlaps with bitcoin's April halving, when block rewards dropped from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. Post-halving periods typically feature a predictable arc: initial miner capitulation, forced liquidations among marginal operators, then a gradual recovery as surviving miners optimize operational efficiency and hash power consolidates. That recovery tends to track with broader risk appetite, and historically correlates with equity strength once the shakeout settles.
Miner economics matter here. The halving cuts per-block revenue in half, squeezing operators with high power costs or aging hardware. Miners running on older-generation chips or operating in high-electricity regions face the sharpest pressure. Those with access to cheap power and modern equipment—predominantly large facilities in Iceland, El Salvador, and parts of the American South—have a structural advantage. The forced rationalization can take weeks or months to play out, during which network hash rate typically falls before stabilizing at a lower baseline of more efficient operations.
Schwab and Hashdex's framing hinges on a capital-diversion story: AI enthusiasm redirected flows that might otherwise have reached bitcoin and the broader digital-asset class. With stocks at record valuations and earnings-per-share growth not yet validating those multiples, the bar for new equity inflows has risen. Digital assets, lacking an earnings anchor, compete for the same speculative and portfolio-balancing capital—and lost out.
But post-halving disconnects from equities aren't unusual. Bitcoin's 2020 halving saw similar periods where equities and crypto traded on divergent narratives before re-coupling. The pattern hinges on when miner shake-outs clear and when institutional investors rotate from AI-heavy trades into broader risk exposure.
The newsroom examined whether the Schwab and Hashdex analysis tied to specific data on capital flows, miner closures, or hash-rate changes in the months after the April halving. The source framing does not provide those granular metrics. Market data shows bitcoin trading around $62,879 at publication, still below its all-time high yet well above the $40,000 range where many smaller miners face unrecoverable losses.
If the AI-capital-diversion thesis holds, watch for a rotation back into risk assets once AI growth narratives mature or consolidate. Miners, meanwhile, are already showing the expected post-halving adjustment pattern: weaker players have exited, hash-rate volatility has subsided, and the network is settling into a new equilibrium. Whether bitcoin re-couples with equities depends less on halving mechanics and more on whether macro conditions—interest rates, Fed policy, earnings surprises—shift sentiment back toward the appetite for both.