Bitcoin mining difficulty drops 10.09%, second-largest decline this year

At block height 953,568, Bitcoin difficulty fell to its lowest level of 2026 after a June price slide squeezed miners and reduced hashrate, easing mining conditions across the network.

BTC

43d ago

Fact Check

All core elements of the claim are corroborated. Galaxy Research (the originating source) states the −10.09% adjustment at block 953,568 (138.96T to 124.93T) was the second-biggest drop of 2026 over a 15.6-day epoch driven by a June price slide compressing miner margins. Two independent outlets report identical figures citing the same source. mempool.space independently confirms the 138.96T pre-adjustment difficulty. The Block confirms the larger February drop of 11.16%, making this the second-largest of the year, exactly as claimed. No conflicting evidence found.

Summary

Bitcoin completed a mining difficulty adjustment at block height 953,568, with difficulty falling 10.09% from 138.96 trillion to 124.93 trillion, the second-largest decline of 2026 after February’s 11.16% drop. Galaxy Research said the move was the 11th-largest single downward adjustment on record and followed a roughly 15.6-day cycle, longer than Bitcoin’s theoretical 14-day target, as a June price slide pressured miner margins and led some operators to shut off unprofitable machines. The lower difficulty lifted bitcoin output per unit of active hashrate by about 11%, helping push spot hashprice back above $30 per petahash per second per day, though mining economics remained strained with Checkonchain estimating average production cost at about $84,300 on June 13 versus a spot price near $63,780.

Terms & Concepts

mining difficulty: Bitcoin’s built-in measure of how much computational work miners must perform to add new blocks.
hashrate: The total computing power miners devote to securing the network and producing blocks.
hashprice: A mining industry metric showing expected daily revenue per unit of computing power.