The difficulty of mining Bitcoin posted a historic 14.7% surge, reaching 144.4 trillion in its latest Friday update—the largest absolute increase ever recorded on the network.

The adjustment occurred at block 937,440 and reversed the 11% drop from the previous period, which had been triggered by a winter storm that forced equipment shutdowns across the United States to ease pressure on electrical grids.

During the period of adverse weather, approximately 200 EH/s of computing power disconnected from the network, including a 60% drop in the hashrate associated with Foundry USA, the largest Bitcoin mining pool by market share. The average block production time exceeded 12 minutes, well above the protocol’s 10-minute target.

Once the harsh conditions subsided, Bitcoin miners reconnected their equipment and the hashrate climbed from approximately 884 to 1,030 exahashes per second, according to data from Mempool. Blocks returned to an average production time of 8 minutes and 47 seconds, triggering the upward adjustment.

Source: https://mempool.space/mining

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Filed under: News - @ February 20, 2026 7:26 pm