Bitcoin's (BTC) mining difficulty fell 7.76% at block 941,472, dropping from approximately 145.04 trillion to 133.68 trillion - one of the largest downward adjustments in recent memory and the sixth adjustment of 2026.
The decline pushes difficulty roughly 10% below its close-of-2025 level and exceeds the 7.93% drop recorded in December 2022 at the bottom of the last bear cycle, according to data from TheEnergyMag.
Difficulty adjusts automatically every 2,016 blocks to maintain a 10-minute average block time. A downward adjustment of this scale reflects that blocks have been produced consistently slower than the target - a direct consequence of miners switching off machines rather than a temporary disruption.
What's Driving the Drop
The Bitcoin network's hashrate has fallen to approximately 915 exahash per second, below the 1 zettahash per second level it had previously maintained. Hashprice - the daily revenue per petahash per second - has fallen to approximately $31, well below the roughly $40 threshold many operators use as a profitability baseline.
At these levels, miners with higher electricity or financing costs are reducing or halting operations, which in turn slows block production and triggers a downward difficulty adjustment.
Contributing factors include softer Bitcoin prices - the asset traded near $72,400 at time of writing, approximately 43% below its October 2025 all-time high - alongside the ongoing impact of the April 2024 halving, which cut the block subsidy in half.
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Concentration and Competitive Dynamics
Four mining pools - Foundry USA, Antpool, ViaBTC, and F2Pool - currently control approximately 70% of global hashrate, according to CoinWarz data.
The concentration is notable for a network that depends on distributed participation to maintain security.
For miners that remain operational, the difficulty drop provides a near-term improvement in economics. With the same hashrate now required to produce more blocks, revenue per unit of computing power improves proportionally - assuming Bitcoin's price and transaction fees hold steady.
Whether the relief translates into a hashrate recovery or further attrition will depend on whether conditions warrant miners bringing offline machines back online over the next two-week period.