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After a brutal sell-off and weather-related outages, the bitcoin mining ecosystem is undergoing a sharp reset that puts Bitcoin mining economics back in the spotlight. Largest difficulty drop since China’s 2021 crackdown Bitcoin‘s BTC $70,411.45 network just saw an 11% decline in mining difficulty, the steepest fall since China‘s industry crackdown in 2021. The adjustment followed a rapid hashrate drop triggered by plunging prices and widespread winter storm-related outages across the U.S. Mining difficulty determines how hard it is to discover new blocks, and it automatically adjusts roughly every two weeks. This mechanism keeps the average block time close to 10 minutes, regardless of how many machines are online. According to Blockchain.com data, the latest change pushed the difficulty metric down from over 141.6 trillion to about 125.86 trillion. That said, such a move signals a meaningful reduction in active hardware securing the network. Price slump and miner shutdowns pressure the network The drop in difficulty comes after a series of blows to miners. Bitcoin fell from an all-time high of $126,000 in October to around $69,500, eroding margins across the sector. Moreover, the declining revenue environment hit operators with older machines and expensive power contracts hardest. Many miners running outdated rigs or exposed to high energy prices were forced to shut down operations. Some operators instead redirected infrastructure toward artificial intelligence workloads, reflecting an emerging ai migration of miners as megacap firms offer longer-term, often more predictable, contracts. One notable example is Bitfarms (BITF), whose share price jumped after it said it is no longer a pure bitcoin company. The firm is repositioning itself as a data center developer focused on high-performance computing and AI, signaling how quickly strategies can shift when mining margins compress. Hashprice collapse and revenue squeeze On a revenue basis, the stress is clear. Bitcoin…

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Filed under: News - @ February 9, 2026 2:30 pm