Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Drops 10% Amid Weaker Margins

Bitcoin's mining difficulty took a significant hit on Sunday, falling by 10.09% to 124.93 trillion. This is the blockchain's 11th-largest downward adjustment, according to Galaxy Research.

The drop in difficulty was caused by a longer-than-usual epoch lasting 15.6 days, which allowed more mining capacity to go offline during that period. This resulted in a decrease in total hash rate, down 12% from the beginning of the month and 23% from its October peak.

As a result of this drop in difficulty, miners are seeing an improvement in expected rewards per machine, with crypto trader Merlijn Enkelaar noting that remaining miners are earning around 9% more per machine. This could help keep marginal miners from exiting the market as quickly due to falling coin prices.

Hashprice also rose by 13% to about $33 per petahash per second per day, moving more efficient mining fleets toward a gross breakeven point. However, this still leaves older-generation machines with higher electricity costs at risk of being idled.