Difficulty Rises, Hashprice Rips 22% as Bitcoin Hashrate Stalls

Bitcoin's mining network has completed its latest automated adjustment, with mining difficulty ticking up by 1.31% to 127.45 trillion at block height 965664. This marks the eighth difficulty increase of 2026 across 18 total difficulty adjustments recorded year-to-date. Despite the latest bump, overall network difficulty remains down approximately 13% from its start-of-year level of 146.47 trillion. Simultaneously, Bitcoin's hashprice—the daily estimated revenue per petahash per second—surged 22.24% over the past 30 days, rising from $32.42 to $39.63 per PH/s. This profitability rebound has been predominantly powered by Bitcoin's underlying spot price recovery rather than transaction activity. Transaction fees accounted for just 0.43% of total miner rewards over the trailing 24 hours. Despite the substantial increase in mining revenue, total network computational power has stagnated, holding at approximately 934 exahashes per second (EH/s) and remaining below the 1 zettahash per second (ZH/s) threshold. The stalled hashrate suggests miners are expanding cautiously or encountering hardware and efficiency constraints in current market conditions.