Bitcoin mining: Bitcoin has just experienced one of the largest mining difficulty adjustments in its history. Mining difficulty dropped by 10.09% on Sunday, which according to available data represents the eleventh largest downward decline since the network’s inception. For the average investor, this may sound like a technical detail, but in reality, it’s an important signal—some miners are shutting down their machines because mining is no longer profitable at lower bitcoin prices and high costs. According to Galaxy Research, mining difficulty dropped at block 953,568 from 138.96 trillion to 124.93 trillion. This is the second-largest decline in 2026 and represents a level approximately 20% below the November peak.
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What mining difficulty actually means
Mining difficulty determines how challenging it is for miners to find a new block and receive a reward in bitcoin. The Bitcoin network automatically adjusts to how much computing power is currently engaged. When there are many miners, difficulty increases. When some machines drop out, difficulty decreases so that new blocks continue to be mined at approximately a stable pace.
That’s exactly what happened now. The last mining epoch, the period between two difficulty adjustments, lasted 15.6 days instead of the usual approximately 14 days. This shows that part of the hashrate—the total computing power of the Bitcoin network—went offline.
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Bitcoin price is putting pressure on miners
The main reason is pressure on miners’ profitability. Bitcoin’s price fell by approximately 15% in June according to Galaxy Research, which significantly narrowed mining companies’ margins. Miners have high fixed costs—especially for electricity, data center operations, and the mining machines themselves. When bitcoin’s price falls, their income decreases, but costs often remain the same.
The total hashrate of the Bitcoin network was around 886 exahashes per second according to reported data. It has fallen by approximately 12% since the beginning of June and was 23% lower compared to the October peak.
Good news for surviving miners
However, the difficulty decline doesn’t mean only bad news. For miners who remained online, the situation has actually improved in the short term. Less competition means that each connected machine has a slightly higher chance of participating in mining a block. According to crypto trader Merlijn Enkelaar, remaining miners now earn approximately 9% more per machine.
The so-called hashprice has also improved, an indicator of how much a miner can expect to earn for a certain amount of computing power. After the difficulty decline, it rose by 13% according to Hashrate Index and reached $33 per petahash per second daily. This is an important threshold because it brings some miners closer to their breakeven point.
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Older machines remain under pressure
However, there’s a difference in efficiency. Modern mining farms with cheaper electricity and newer machines can be profitable even at lower hashprices. Conversely, older generations of mining equipment with higher electricity consumption can become unprofitable at current prices. These machines are typically the first ones operators shut down when bitcoin’s price falls.
A similar situation occurred in February, when bitcoin mining difficulty dropped by more than 11%. According to available information, this was driven by outages related to storms and approximately a 25% drop in BTC price. The largest difficulty decline in history came in July 2021 after China’s mining ban, which led to a massive relocation of miners to other countries.
What comes next
The next difficulty adjustment is expected on June 27. Estimates are continuously changing based on the current block mining speed. CoinMarketCap reported a prediction of a 1.69% increase toward a level around 127 trillion.
For the average reader, the key takeaway is that the Bitcoin network is functioning exactly as it should. When mining becomes unprofitable for some players and the network’s power decreases, difficulty automatically decreases. This allows operations to adapt to the new reality, and miners who remain obtain slightly more favorable conditions.
The current difficulty decline is therefore not a sign of bitcoin’s collapse. Rather, it shows how harshly the mining economy is reacting today to falling BTC prices, expensive electricity, and differences between modern and outdated mining machines. Bitcoin is once again reminding us that behind its price chart lies not just investor speculation, but also a very real industry that must calculate every day whether it’s still profitable to run.
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