Bitcoin Mining Gets 9.1% Easier in Biggest Difficulty Cut Since June

Bitcoin mining got 9.1% easier at 12:02 a.m. ET Saturday, when the network cut its difficulty at block 975,744, mempool.space data show. That's the biggest cut since a 10.1% drop on June 13.

For miners, the reset changes the odds. Each machine now has a better chance of finding a block, so revenue per unit of computing power rises until the next adjustment, as The Defiant also reported.

Why blocks set the difficulty

Difficulty is the target a miner's computer must hit to add a block. The network checks every 2,016 blocks, roughly two weeks, against a goal of one block every 10 minutes. The last batch took about 15.4 days, or close to 11 minutes a block. So the code lowered difficulty from 148.4 trillion to 134.8 trillion, per mempool.space's adjustment history.

It's the third-largest cut of 2026. February's was 11.2% and June's was 10.1%. The two resets before Saturday's both raised difficulty, by 5.9% on Oct. 16 and 5.5% on Oct. 29.

The money per block

The miner who finds each block gets 3.125 newly issued bitcoin plus fees. At $67,236, bitcoin's price at 5:56 a.m. ET per CoinGecko, that subsidy is worth about $210,000, with the coin down 3.0% in 24 hours.

The network's estimated computing power (its hashrate) stood near 909 exahashes per second on Saturday, mempool.space shows. The data show blocks slowed down. They don't show why.

The next reset is due around Nov. 28 at block 977,760. Mempool.space's early estimate points to another cut of about 6.3%, based on the first 39 blocks of the new period.

In our opinion: this reset is a pay bump for the machines still running, funded by the ones that went quiet. The figure to check is Nov. 28: a second cut in a row would mean the slow blocks lasted about a month. The reset can't touch the other half of a miner's math, though, which is what 3.125 bitcoin fetches.