Bitcoin difficulty falls 10% after June price slide, AI shift

Bitcoin mining difficulty declined 10.09% to 124.9 trillion at block 953,568, down from 138.9 trillion. The adjustment is the second-largest drop of 2026 and ranks among the largest downward moves in the network’s history, according to data from Galaxy Research. The protocol resets difficulty every 2,016 blocks to keep average block times near 10 minutes; when operators pull hashrate offline, the protocol reduces difficulty to rebalance mining work.

The decline followed a roughly 15% Bitcoin price drop in June that narrowed miner margins. The adjustment epoch ran about 15.6 days versus the 14-day target as hashrate fell. Bitcoin’s price slipped below $60,000 during the selloff before recovering above $64,000 later in the month.

Daily mining revenue, measured as hashprice, fell below $30 per petahash per second, a level that pushes higher-cost operations and older machines closer to breakeven. “When hashprice sinks below $30 per petahash, older-generation machines and higher-cost operators are likely to be switched off,” industry analysts noted, adding that more efficient fleets can continue operating at lower revenue levels.

A separate factor was the redeployment of electrical capacity toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing workloads. Industry observers reported that several public miners have unplugged rigs or slowed expansion while retrofitting sites for contracted AI or HPC work. Those changes can remove bitcoin hashrate even when the underlying power capacity remains in use for other computing tasks.

Regional dynamics also influenced curtailment. The four-coincident-peak season in Texas began in June, creating incentives for large electricity users to avoid brief monthly peak windows that determine next year’s transmission charges. That mechanism encourages large consumers, including miners, to curtail load during potential peak intervals, temporarily removing significant mining capacity in a state that is a major North American mining hub.

Network hashrate showed signs of recovery after early-June reductions, indicating some curtailments were temporary rather than permanent closures. The lower difficulty will reduce the computational work required per block for the next roughly two-week epoch, increasing bitcoin earned per unit of hashrate for active miners until the next adjustment.

This was the third sizeable downward difficulty adjustment of 2026, after 11.16% and 7.76% declines in February and March. Difficulty and hashprice continue to serve as operational indicators for miners when deciding whether to run equipment, replace machines, or reallocate power capacity to other computing uses.