Bitcoin's mining difficulty has experienced a significant drop, decreasing by 11.16% on February 7, 2026. This marks the largest single negative adjustment since July 2021, when China cracked down on cryptocurrency mining. The difficulty was adjusted at block height 935,424, bringing it down to 125.86 T.

The decline in mining difficulty reflects a drop in the network hashrate. The current network hashrate is 948.13 EH/s. The difficulty adjustment is directly related to the total estimated mining power. A high difficulty means it takes more computing power to mine a Bitcoin block, securing the network against attacks. The Bitcoin network adjusts the difficulty every 2016 blocks, or approximately every two weeks, to maintain an average block time of 10 minutes.

This adjustment ranks as the tenth largest drop in Bitcoin's history. Production cuts at mining farms, potentially due to weather conditions at the end of January, are considered a primary cause for this reduction. Despite the difficulty decrease, there are signs of recovery in the implied hash rate toward the end of the current difficulty adjustment cycle. Some analysis indicates the Bitcoin mining difficulty is expected to decrease further in the next adjustment. This substantial drop may suggest changes in miner activity or fluctuations in the network's hash rate. Traders are also monitoring altcoins, as Bitcoin analysis suggests broader market shifts could follow.