Bitcoin’s mining difficulty increased by 7.15% on June 26, 2026, at block height 955,584, following a prior decline of 10.09%. This adjustment makes discovering a new block 7.15% more difficult, pushing the difficulty rating to 133.87 trillion.
For context, when Satoshi mined the genesis block, a valid hash required roughly eight leading zeros in hexadecimal. Today, at a difficulty of 133.87 trillion, it needs about 22 leading zeros. Each additional zero makes the odds exponentially tougher because the target shrinks by a factor of 16 each time.
Price Decline Adds Pressure
This difficulty increase comes as Bitcoin’s value has fallen 43% over the past 12 months and now sits 51% below its all-time high above $126,000. The decline has weighed heavily on miner revenue. Hashprice, which represents the expected value of one petahash per second (PH/s), currently sits at $28.68. That’s 18.34% lower than 30 days earlier on May 27, when hashprice stood at $35.12.
Hashrate Remains Stubbornly High
Despite these pressures, the network hashrate remains elevated near 1,000 EH/s, currently at 984 EH/s. Although there have been several meaningful drawdowns, Bitcoin’s hashrate has held firm near that level. Not all hashrate is equal though. New hardware keeps the most efficient operators profitable, while low-cost or flexible power now defines much of the hashrate still active. Low transaction fees sting, but they aren’t the decisive variable for survival.
The Miner Mindset
The reality is that many miners operate on thin margins, or even brief losses, while betting on a cyclical recovery. Deployed mining machines are sunk capital. Shutting down completely means surrendering future upside, possible difficulty relief, and the chance to accumulate Bitcoin. This mindset shows in today’s hashrate: a network that has largely moved sideways since last year’s all-time highs, which coincided with Bitcoin’s price peaks.
Bitcoin doesn’t blink. The 7.15% difficulty jump shows a mining network doing exactly what it was built to do: ignore price, margins, and miner pain. Hashprice may be down 18% in a month, and Bitcoin may trade 51% below its peak, but the protocol just counts blocks and tightens the target as needed. The miners left standing are the efficient, the committed, or both, keeping the target 133.87 trillion times smaller than Satoshi’s in 2009.
