Bitcoin miners are losing $19,000 on every BTC produced as difficulty drops 7.8%

Checkonchain's difficulty regression model pegged average production costs at $88,000 per bitcoin as of March 13. With bitcoin trading at $69,200 on Sunday morning, that leaves nearly a $19,000 gap and means the average miner is operating at a 21% loss on every block produced.

The network is showing strain: difficulty fell 7.76% on Saturday to 133.79 trillion, the second-largest negative adjustment of 2026 after February's 11.16% plunge during Winter Storm Fern. Difficulty is now almost 10% below its level at the start of the year and well under November 2025's high near 155 trillion, while hashrate has retreated to roughly 920 EH/s from the 1 zetahash peak in 2025.

Average block times in the last epoch stretched to 12 minutes and 36 seconds, above the 10-minute target. The conflict in Iran has amplified the squeeze: oil above $100 pushes power costs higher, affecting an estimated 8–10% of global hashrate that depends on energy markets sensitive to Middle Eastern supply.

Iran

bitcoin, bitcoin miners, mining difficulty, hashrate, production costs, block time, checkonchain, winter storm, oil prices, iran conflict