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Bitcoin’s next difficulty drop could cut miner revenue expectations

Difficulty is expected to adjust around July 26, with protocol changes lowering the required hashrate, but miners still face power costs and weak hashprice levels.

Reported · Written up by our desk · Market Structure

Bitcoin is set to undergo its next mining difficulty adjustment around July 26, and the move could lower difficulty by roughly 16%, according to CryptoSlate. The protocol adjusts difficulty every 2,016 blocks based on how long the prior window took to mine, aiming to keep the average block interval near 10 minutes.

CryptoSlate notes that the difficulty decrease would increase the expected share of rewards for miners still operating, since each surviving miner gets a larger portion of the fixed 3.125 BTC block subsidy per unit of hashrate. However, the outlet says difficulty changes cannot directly address costly electricity contracts, debt obligations, or other strategic pressures that have been pushing major mining firms away from the industry.

The article points to current revenue economics as a constraint on the potential benefit. Hashprice, the daily revenue miners expect from one petahash per second, was $30.88 per PH/s/day on July 13, with a seven-day average of $30.39, levels it describes as at or below breakeven for many operators depending on their power costs and machine models.

CryptoSlate also highlights how quickly relief can fade when conditions change, citing difficulty shifts since mid-June. Difficulty fell 10.09% in mid-June, rose 7.15% on June 26, and then fell another 5% on July 11 after computing capacity weakened again, while eight of the first 14 adjustments in 2026 were negative.

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