Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Falls In First Adjustment Of 2026

The Bitcoin mining difficulty continued to push through to new all-time highs in 2025 amid a turbulent year for the mining industry.

The Bitcoin (BTC) network mining difficulty, the relative computing challenge of adding a new block to the decentralized blockchain ledger, fell slightly to 146.4 trillion on Thursday, in the first difficulty adjustment of 2026.

“The next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is estimated to take place on Jan 22, 2026, 04:08:12 AM UTC, increasing the Bitcoin mining difficulty from 146.47 T to 148.20 T,” according to CoinWarz.

Average block times are 9.88 minutes at the time of this writing, slightly below the 10-minute target, which means the next difficulty adjustment will increase slightly to align better with the target block time.

Mining difficulty reached new all-time highs in 2025, with the final adjustment of the year slightly increasing the difficulty level. However, even with the slight increase, difficulty remained well below the all-time high of 155.9 trillion recorded in November.

The rising difficulty means increased competition to mine blocks on the network, presenting more challenges to the mining industry, which suffered from macroeconomic, regulatory, and financial headwinds in 2025.

Related: Bitcoin mining’s 2026 reckoning: AI pivots, margin pressure and a fight to survive

Bitcoin miners experienced one of the toughest profitability environments on record, as profit margins eroded due to the April 2024 halving, which slashed the block subsidy by 50% and macroeconomic developments.

The crypto market downturn, which began in November, placed additional pressure on Miners and mining companies.

Miner hash price, a critical metric for miner profitability, which tracks expected revenue per unit of computing power expended to mine blocks, fell below breakeven levels in November 2025.

Source: CoinTelegraph