Bitcoin mining difficulty falls 11% as miners capitulate

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty fell about 11%, the largest decline since China’s 2021 crackdown, after a sharp drop in hashrate tied to plunging prices and winter storm outages. The metric moved from just over 141.6 trillion to roughly 125.86 trillion as the network rebalanced; difficulty adjusts roughly every two weeks to preserve a 10-minute block interval.

Miners have been squeezed by a steep price retreat from an October all-time high of $126,000 to around $69,500. Revenue per petahash has dropped by half, from about $70 at the peak to roughly $35, pushing operators with older rigs or high power costs to shut down or repurpose equipment for AI workloads.

Bitfarms notably shifted focus to data-center development for high-performance computing and AI, boosting its share price. Severe winter storms, especially in Texas, compounded the pressure as grid operators issued curtailment requests and public miners cut production.

United States, Texas

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