Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Plunges 10% in Largest Decline Since February

Bitcoin's mining difficulty has dropped by 10.09% in its second-largest decline of 2026, reaching a new low at block 953,568.

This adjustment marks the 11th-biggest downward move in Bitcoin's history and follows a sharp June price slide that squeezed miner margins and pulled hashrate offline, according to Galaxy Research.

The drop in difficulty is attributed to a combination of factors, including economics and redeployment of power capacity from mining toward artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.

Several public miners have been unplugging mining rigs or slowing mining growth as they retrofit sites for contracted AI/HPC use, a strategy that can remove bitcoin hashrate even when the underlying power capacity remains in use.