Overview
- Bitcoin’s mining difficulty fell roughly 9.55%, a large downward reset triggered by a multi-week slide in network hashrate that measured below usual levels for the epoch.
- Measured hashrate dropped from near 1 ZH/s at the end of May to roughly 861 EH/s around the key recalibration period and has since partially recovered to about 894 EH/s, which caused the protocol to lower difficulty.
- A brief early-June price slide toward $60,000 tightened miner margins and pushed some older or inefficient rigs offline, reducing competing hashpower and slowing block production.
- Seasonal grid curtailments in Texas under ERCOT’s 4CP peak-window rules removed temporary mining load, and several public miners are repurposing power capacity for AI and high-performance computing contracts, creating longer-term downward pressure on network hashrate.
- The lower difficulty should boost bitcoin output per unit of active hashrate by roughly 9% and is expected to lift hashprice above about $30 per PH/s, which may stabilize margins for many operators but could be reversed if prices fall again or redeployments continue; Bitcoin’s protocol will automatically retarget difficulty every 2,016 blocks to restore a roughly 10-minute block cadence.