The Bitcoin network has undergone its 11th-largest downward difficulty adjustment in history, with difficulty falling 10.09% at block 953,568, from 138.96T to 124.93T, according to Galaxy Research. This marks the second-largest decline of 2026.
Drivers behind the hashrate decline
The hashrate drop was triggered by a roughly 15% price decline in early June, which heavily squeezed miner margins and forced some operators to shut down older rigs. Additionally, power capacity is increasingly being diverted from Bitcoin mining to high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, further reducing hashrate.
Impact on the network
The reduced hashrate extended the previous epoch to 15.6 days, well beyond the standard 14-day target. The current block time average is 13.23 minutes, meaning the network is running 3.23 minutes slower than expected. Over the last 90 days, the average difficulty change is -13.86%.
Future adjustments
The 10.09% cut is expected to boost BTC output per active hashrate by over 9% and may push mining hash price back above $30 per PH/s. The next difficulty adjustment, estimated for Thursday, could see another massive 24.43% drop, lowering difficulty to 94.41T.
