Difficulty climbs to 140.58 trillion
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty moved up 5.92% this week, taking the network to a seven-month high. The adjustment lifted difficulty from 132.72 trillion to 140.58 trillion. That is the third-largest increase this year and extends a recovery that started over the summer.
The network has now seen 21 difficulty adjustments in 2026. This latest one is the 10th rise. Difficulty changes are tied to block production. When miners find blocks faster than the target, the protocol raises difficulty at the end of a 2,016-block epoch. When blocks slow down, difficulty falls.
Hashprice improves, then slips
The increase came as bitcoin’s price moved higher, which gave miners better revenue for a time. Hashprice, a measure of estimated daily revenue per petahash per second, was $37.56 on Sept. 16. It climbed above $41 on two occasions in the past 30 days, including Oct. 2. For much of that stretch, mining revenue stayed 6% to 9% above the Sept. 16 level.
By Friday, Oct. 16, hashprice had eased back to $36.75 per petahash per second. Still, the better revenue environment encouraged more miners to join the network. That pushed Bitcoin’s total hashrate back above 1,000 exahash per second, or 1 zettahash per second. It is a modest move compared with the wilder swings of past cycles, but it still affects planning for miners with thin margins.
Hashrate tops 1 ZH/s
At the time of writing, hashrate was around 1,024.96 EH/s. Block times were about 8 minutes and 45 seconds. A rising hashrate generally speeds up block production, which can trigger an upward difficulty adjustment when an epoch closes early. A falling hashrate does the opposite.
The next adjustment is due on or around Oct. 28, 2026. Current estimates point to a 14.24% rise. But only a few dozen of the 2,016 blocks in the epoch have been mined, so that projection could change a lot before the period ends.
