Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has experienced its largest single downward adjustment since China’s 2021 mining crackdown, with a drop of approximately 11% specifically around 11.16% in the most recent reports.
This adjustment took effect recently, at block height ~935,424, reducing the difficulty from over 141.67 trillion to about 125.86 trillion. This marks one of the steepest declines in Bitcoin’s history outside of the massive hashrate exodus following China’s ban in mid-2021, which caused even larger drops in some cases.
The decline stems from a significant reduction in the network’s total hashrate estimated ~20% drop in some analyses, as miners went offline or reduced operations due to: Plummeting Bitcoin prices — BTC has fallen sharply from recent highs, pressuring profitability.
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From peaks around $70/PH/s to roughly $35/PH/s, making many operations unprofitable. Severe winter storms in the U.S. causing widespread power outages and forcing curtailments, especially in major mining regions. Some miners shifting resources to higher-margin opportunities like AI computing projects.
This “miner capitulation” — where less efficient or higher-cost operators shut down — is a natural self-correcting mechanism in Bitcoin’s protocol. Difficulty adjusts every ~2,014 blocks roughly two weeks to keep average block times near 10 minutes.
With slower block times drifting to ~11.4 minutes pre-adjustment, the network lowered difficulty to make mining easier again. Short-term relief for remaining miners — Lower difficulty reduces competition, potentially boosting rewards and profitability for those still online; an “automatic pay raise” in BTC terms for survivors.
Hashrate dips temporarily reduce security, but the adjustment helps stabilize it by incentivizing participation. It highlights stress in the mining sector amid broader crypto market weakness, but historically, such resets have preceded recoveries as inefficient players exit and stronger ones consolidate.
The next difficulty adjustment is estimated around February 19-20, 2026, with projections suggesting a rebound (increase) to around 140-143 trillion if hashrate stabilizes or recovers. This event underscores Bitcoin’s resilience through automatic difficulty adjustments, even during tough periods.
Hashrate often written as “hash rate” is one of the most important metrics in Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains like Bitcoin. It measures the total computational power dedicated to the network for mining—specifically, how many hash calculations (guesses) the entire network (or an individual miner/machine) can perform per second.
In Bitcoin mining, miners compete to solve a cryptographic puzzle by finding a specific number (called a nonce) that, when combined with the block’s data and run through the SHA-256 hashing algorithm, produces a hash (a 256-bit/64-character hexadecimal number) that meets the current target — meaning the hash starts with a certain number of leading zeros (or is below a very small threshold value). Each attempt to find this valid hash is one “hash calculation.”
Because the output is essentially random, miners must make billions/trillions of guesses per second ? this brute-force guessing is what consumes enormous electricity and requires specialized hardware.
The Bitcoin network’s total hashrate is fluctuating around ~980–1,100 EH/s roughly 1 ZH/s in recent peaks before the recent drop, down from higher levels earlier in 2026 due to the difficulty adjustment and temporary offline capacity (e.g., from U.S. winter storms).
Difficulty is a separate but tightly linked parameter: it automatically adjusts every 2,016 blocks (~2 weeks) to keep average block time at 10 minutes. If hashrate rises sharply (more miners join), blocks get found faster ? difficulty increases to make the puzzle harder.
If hashrate drops (miners go offline), blocks slow down ? difficulty decreases as we just saw with the ~11% drop. In practice, network hashrate and difficulty move in tandem over time: higher hashrate forces higher difficulty, and vice versa.
The network estimates total hashrate from observed block times and current difficulty (it’s not directly reported by every miner). A high hashrate makes the blockchain extremely resistant to attacks, especially a 51% attack; where an attacker controls >50% of hashrate to rewrite history, double-spend, or censor transactions.
With ~1,000 EH/s today, mounting a 51% attack would require controlling hardware and energy equivalent to a small country’s power grid — astronomically expensive and practically infeasible. Rising hashrate generally indicates growing participation, new efficient hardware (ASICs), and miner confidence in Bitcoin’s future price/profitability.
Hashrate per unit of power determines who survives low-price environments. When BTC price falls or electricity costs rise, inefficient miners capitulate ? hashrate drops temporarily ? difficulty adjusts down ? survivors get a relative “pay raise” in BTC rewards.
Sudden large drops like the recent one signal stress while steady climbs show resilience and investment in infrastructure. Hashrate is Bitcoin’s “heartbeat” — it quantifies the raw brute-force computing muscle protecting the ledger, self-regulating through difficulty adjustments, and reflecting miner economics in real time.