Bitcoin's Difficulty Edges Down 0.74%

Bitcoin's mining difficulty adjusted lower by 0.74% on Saturday, settling at 126.23 trillion. Difficulty is the network's self-correcting measure of how hard it is to find a block; it resets every 2,016 blocks, roughly every two weeks, so that blocks keep arriving about ten minutes apart. Hashrate Index, the only outlet to report this adjustment in detail, recorded both the size of the move and the new level. The number was notable for how small it was: the previous reset, on 11 July, took 5.00% off, and it followed a steep drop in the computing power aimed at the network. A retarget that barely moves says the machines that switched off in early July stopped switching off.

The Move: A 0.74% Trim After a 5% Cut

The July 11 adjustment landed at block 957,600 and took difficulty from 133.87 trillion to 127.17 trillion, removing about 6.7 trillion in one step. It was bitcoin's 14th adjustment of 2026; eight of those had been negative and six positive, a pattern that describes a year of machines leaving the network more often than joining it. Saturday's reset moved the same series down a further 0.74%, to 126.23 trillion — less than a sixth of a percent of the ground given up two weeks earlier, in absolute terms under a trillion against nearly seven. Set against the 5.00% cut two weeks earlier, the second July reset amounts to a flat line.

The Signal: Hashrate That Stopped Leaving

Difficulty is a lagging read on hashrate, the total computing power miners point at the network, measured in exahashes per second. The protocol looks backward at how quickly the last 2,016 blocks were found and adjusts so the next 2,016 arrive on schedule. The 5% cut reflected a real exodus: the seven-day average hashrate slid from 986 EH/s on 1 July to roughly 908 EH/s by 11 July, a fall of 7.9% in ten days, and Hashrate Index put the seven-day average at 879 EH/s the week of 13 July, down from 939 EH/s the week before. A 0.74% trim means the second half of the month produced blocks at very nearly the ten-minute target, which in turn means the average hashrate over that stretch was close to the average the previous adjustment had already priced in. Nothing large came back, but nothing large left either.

Miner Economics: A Flat Retarget Hands Out No Relief

A miner's revenue is its share of the total hashrate multiplied by what the network pays out, so when difficulty falls and the bitcoin price holds, every machine still running earns more per unit of work. That is what the July 11 cut delivered: hashprice, the daily revenue a miner earns per unit of computing power, rose 12.5% to $31.1 per petahash per second per day on the easing, though it remained far below the October 2025 peak of $49.4. A near-flat retarget delivers nothing of the kind. With difficulty steady, revenue per machine is left to whatever the bitcoin price and transaction fees provide, and operators whose electricity costs sit near the break-even line get no second reprieve.

That cuts both ways. Miners who survived the first half of July at 879 EH/s of network-wide competition now know the bar has not risen against them either, which stabilizes planning for the fleets that stayed on. It also leaves room at the margins for the small operators and solo miners still pointing hashrate at the network from home hardware, whose odds of finding a block are set directly by the difficulty level they are competing against.

What Is Unresolved: The Next 2,016 Blocks

The cumulative fall in difficulty since 8 January stood at 14.22% as of the July 11 reset, and Saturday's move barely changed that figure. Whether it becomes a floor or a pause depends on what happens over the next 2,016 blocks, which will take roughly another two weeks to mine. If hashrate holds where it has settled, the next adjustment should be as unremarkable as this one. If prices fall far enough to push another tranche of older machines below their electricity costs, difficulty has already shown this year how quickly it follows them out.