Miners Absorb 18% Hashprice Crash as Bitcoin Difficulty Jumps 7.15%

Bitcoin’s difficulty climbed sharply this week, rising 7.15% and notching the second-largest upward adjustment of the year. Although the network has recorded six increases in 2026, downward adjustments have remained the prevailing theme.

On June 26, 2026, at block height 955,584, Bitcoin’s difficulty rating rose 7.15% after the prior epoch’s 10.09% decline. The adjustment means discovering a block is now 7.15% more difficult than before, lifting the difficulty to 133.87 trillion. For context, when Satoshi mined the genesis block, a valid hash required roughly eight leading zeros in hexadecimal; today, it needs about 22 leading zeros.

The difficulty increase arrives as bitcoin’s value has fallen 43% over the past 12 months and now sits 51% below its all-time high above $126,000. That decline has weighed on miner revenue, with hashprice, the expected value of one petahash per second, sitting at $28.68—18.34% lower than 30 days earlier.

Despite the squeeze, hashrate remains elevated near the 1,000 EH/s range, at 984 EH/s at press time. New hardware keeps the most efficient operators profitable, while low-cost or flexible power defines much of the hashrate still standing. The reality is that many miners operate on thin margins or even brief losses, betting on cyclical recovery and the chance to accumulate BTC. Deployed mining machines are sunk capital; shutting down entirely means surrendering future upside.

Bitcoin’s 7.15% difficulty jump shows a mining network doing exactly what it was built to do: ignore price, margins, and miner pain. Hashprice may be down 18% in a month, and bitcoin may trade 51% below its peak, but the protocol just counts blocks and tightens the target as necessary. The miners left standing are the efficient, the committed, or both.

Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/miners-absorb-18-hashprice-crash-as-bitcoin-difficulty-jumps-7-15/