Bitcoin difficulty may drop about 16% and change miner economics
Bitcoin's upcoming difficulty adjustment could reduce the network requirement by roughly 16% around July 26, improving expected rewards per unit of hashrate for surviving machines but not fixing miners' contracted electricity costs or debt. The network fell 5% on July 11 to 127.17 trillion, while hashprice was about $30.88 per PH/s/day on July 13, near or below breakeven for many operators and 37% below October 2025 peaks. Transaction fees contributed only 0.69% of rewards. A double-digit cut mainly helps the newest, cheapest fleets, while some firms sell bitcoin or pivot to AI leases backed by multi-decade contracts.
A 16% difficulty cut would increase rewards for remaining miners.
Context
The network already cut difficulty by 5% on July 11. Hashprice sat near $30.88 per PH/s/day and many operators faced breakeven pressures. A further cut could change whether fleets restart or sites shift to AI compute.
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