Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Drops 10% in Second-Largest 2026 Decline

Bitcoin (BTC) recorded its second-largest mining difficulty drop of 2026, falling 10.09% at block 953,568. 

The adjustment ranks as the 11th-biggest downward move in the network’s history, according to Galaxy Research. 

Why the Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Dropped

Mining difficulty fell from 138.9 trillion to 124.9 trillion. The drop followed a sharp June price slide that squeezed miner margins and pulled hashrate offline.

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Bitcoin adjusts its difficulty every 2,016 blocks to keep block times near 10 minutes. When miners power down, difficulty falls to rebalance the network.

This was the third significant downward adjustment of 2026, following 11.16% and 7.76% drops in February and March, respectively. The latest decline came amid a broader Bitcoin downtrend.

“A ~15% June price slide squeezed miner margins. The epoch ran 15.6 days vs the 14-day target as hashrate came offline,” Galaxy said.

Bitcoin saw a notable drawdown this month. The price even dropped below $60,000 last week before rebounding to over $64,000 on hopes of a US-Iran deal.

The selloff pushed hashprice, a daily mining revenue measure, below $30 per petahash per second. 

“That threshold is important for miners because it pushes more sites closer to, or below, gross breakeven before corporate overhead, debt service, and expansion spending. While the most efficient fleets can continue to generate positive margins at lower hashprice levels, older-generation machines and operators with higher electricity costs are more likely to be switched off when revenue falls,” TheEnergyMag noted.

Bitcoin Miners Curtail and Pivot to AI

Part of the decline reflects economics. Another driver is the redeployment of power capacity from mining toward artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.

“Several public miners have been unplugging mining rigs or slowing mining growth as they retrofit sites for contracted AI/HPC use, a strategy that can remove bitcoin hashrate even when the underlying power capacity remains in use,” the blog added.

Texas, meanwhile, may have also added to the volatility. The four-coincident-peak (4CP) season began in June. Large ERCOT users avoid the four summer peak intervals that set the next year’s transmission costs.

“For bitcoin miners, the 4CP mechanism creates a strong incentive to curtail during potential monthly peak windows…That can temporarily remove significant mining load from the network, particularly because Texas remains one of the largest mining markets in North America. The recent rebound in network hashrate suggests some of the early June reduction may have been a temporary curtailment rather than a permanent shutdown,” TheEnergyMag stated.

The lower difficulty offers some relief to miners who stayed online. For the next two-week epoch, each block takes less computational work to mine. That shift increases the amount of bitcoin active operators earn per unit of hashrate they run.

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