Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Drops 7.7% as Block Production Slows

Bitcoin’s protocol recalibrates mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, roughly every two weeks, to keep block production near 10 minutes. Falling difficulty signals that computing power is leaving the network as weaker mining economics force operators to shut machines. The shift matters beyond crypto: power-rich miners and data-center owners are increasingly reallocating electricity and capital to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. CoinShares said in March that listed miners had announced more than $70 billion of AI and HPC contracts, turning energy access into the industry’s key competitive asset.

On July 25, the network cut difficulty 0.74% at block 959,616 to 126.23 trillion, its 15th adjustment of 2026. That left difficulty 13.82% below the year’s 146.47 trillion high, a decline of about 14%, after nine reductions and six increases. Estimated hashprice, or daily miner revenue per petahash per second, fell to $32.21 from $37.39 at the start of the year, while bitcoin was down 26%. The revenue squeeze is accelerating the diversion of megawatts and investment toward AI infrastructure and cloud-computing customers.

The Bitcoin network automatically adjusts mining difficulty roughly every two weeks based on total network computing power to maintain an average block time of about 10 minutes. When BTC prices weaken, electricity and equipment costs can force less efficient miners to shut down. A downward difficulty adjustment reduces competition among active mining machines, affecting miners’ cash flow and network security.

On Sunday, July 19, 2026, Bitcoin mining difficulty fell 10.09% to 124.93 trillion, the second-largest decline this year and the 11th-largest on record. The network hashrate was down 23% from its October 2025 peak as cryptocurrency prices fell and some computing power went offline. Following the adjustment, short-term revenue per mining machine rose by about 9%, while hashprice returned to the $30-per-PH/s-per-day threshold.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty adjusts periodically with network hashrate to maintain the average block-production time. After the 2024 halving cut the block reward to 3.125 bitcoin, rising energy costs continued to pressure the profitability and treasury strategies of listed miners including MARA and Riot. Their bitcoin sales have also become an important indicator of the industry’s financial health.

Bitcoin mining difficulty fell about 1.1% in the latest adjustment to 135.5 T, but the market expects it to rise in the next adjustment in early May 2026. Listed miners including MARA and Riot sold more than 32,000 bitcoin in total during the first quarter of 2026, exceeding their combined sales for all of 2025 and setting a quarterly record.