Bitcoin Network Mining Difficulty Falls in Jan 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 () 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 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 .

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, Bitcoin Mining — *The Bitcoin network mining difficulty. Source:*

Mining difficulty reached new all-time highs in 2025, with the final adjustment of the year . 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.

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Bitcoin miners experienced one of the toughest profitability environments on record, as profit margins eroded due to the April 2024 halving, which 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, in November 2025.

$40 per petahash-second per day is the level at which miners must decide whether to turn their rigs off or continue mining blocks. In November, this metric dropped below $35 — a multi-year low.

The tariffs enacted by US President Donald Trump also , creating fears of supply chain shortages.

A sharp crypto market downturn, sparked by a , discounted BTC prices by over 30% in November, when BTC hit a low just north of $80,000.

Although Bitcoin prices have rallied since that time, they are still far below the all-time high of over $125,000 reached in October.

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