Bitcoin’s next difficulty adjustment could lower the network’s mining requirement by roughly 16% around July 26, handing the machines still online a larger expected share of the same block subsidy. The relief arrives as some of the largest operators sell Bitcoin and commit their power capacity to multibillion-dollar AI leases instead.
Bitcoin could lower mining difficulty by roughly 16% when its next adjustment arrives around July 26 — enough to improve the economics of every machine that remains online, and almost nothing against the expensive power contracts, debt obligations and strategic pressures pushing some of the industry’s largest companies away from mining.
The network already lowered difficulty by 5% at block 957,600 on July 11, bringing it to 127.17 trillion. Hashrate Index reported that hashprice, the daily revenue miners expect from one petahash per second of computing power, stood at $30.88 per PH/s/day on July 13, with a seven-day average of $30.39.
That level was at or below breakeven for many operators depending on their power costs and machine models. Hashprice had recovered from the $27.60 level recorded around the beginning of July, but it remains 37% below its October 2025 peak near $49.40.
The protocol can repair block times, not balance sheets
Bitcoin adjusts difficulty every 2,016 blocks according to how long the previous 2,016 took to produce, pulling the average block interval back toward ten minutes. When difficulty falls, each surviving miner receives a larger expected share of the same 3.125 BTC subsidy for every unit of hashrate it contributes.
Yet the benefit can disappear almost as quickly as it arrives. Difficulty fell 10.09% in mid-June, then rose 7.15% on June 26 as hashrate returned. Across 2026, eight of Bitcoin’s first 14 adjustments were negative, while compounded difficulty declined approximately 14.22% from the January 8 peak of 146.47 trillion.
Transaction fees have provided almost no cushion, with miners collecting approximately 2,914 BTC in total rewards during the week to July 13 while fees represented only 0.69% of block rewards.
AI leases now outweigh a difficulty cut
The strongest alternative to volatile mining revenue is no longer theoretical. TeraWulf signed a 20-year Anthropic lease covering approximately 401 MW of critical IT load and roughly $19 billion of expected contracted revenue. Hut 8’s second 352 MW Beacon Point lease increased contracted capacity at the campus to 704 MW and campus-level base-term contract value to $19.6 billion.
Balance sheets tell the same story. MARA sold 20,880 BTC for approximately $1.5 billion during the first quarter of 2026 while reporting a $1.26 billion net loss on $175 million of revenue. Riot Platforms produced 1,473 BTC in the same quarter and sold 3,778 BTC for net proceeds of $289.5 million at an average price of $76,626.
What the next adjustment will reveal
Once the retarget lands, the initial percentage change says less about the industry than the behavior of hashrate in the days that follow it. A large reduction followed by a rapid recovery in hashrate would indicate that efficient operators had machines waiting for better economics, setting the network up for another upward adjustment during the following epoch.
A large reduction followed by persistently weak hashrate, however, would point toward more permanent fleet retirements, continued consolidation and an accelerating migration of power infrastructure toward workloads outside Bitcoin. A healthier block interval doesn’t necessarily indicate a healthier mining sector.
Source: CryptoSlate
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