Bitcoin mining difficulty hits 148T ahead of 2026 adjustment

Mining difficulty for Bitcoin has risen to 148.2 trillion in the latest 2025 difficulty reset, the highest level since miners’ and adversarial network forces collided in earnest.

That is a significant jump in general, as the protocol is setting up for one more leg higher into early 2026. What is also increasing, and steadily rising through 2025, is the difficulty of inserting a new block into the Bitcoin ledger.

At the beginning of the year, it was substantially below 110 trillion and rose in tandem with the increasing demand for mining hash power. In competitive situations, some miners increased production to afford the necessary equipment for gains. The current level is roughly 35% above January’s baseline, although still shy of the October peak, which was near 156 trillion.

The rising difficulty reflects the overall growth in the network’s computational power. Analysts remain uncertain about what this major shift signals for Bitcoin, but it highlights both the resilience and the challenges faced by miners.

More complexity leads to a more secure network, albeit at the expense of smaller miners who run less powerful machines, in part because their profit margins are thin.

Rising hash power drives difficulty higher

The Bitcoin network difficulty is directly proportional to the hashrate and adjusts itself every two weeks (or more precisely, every 2,016 blocks) to find new blocks approximately every 10 minutes.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty rises when blocks are mined too quickly and falls when they’re mined too slowly. At the last adjustment, the average time between blocks was roughly 9.95 minutes—slightly slower than the current pace. This acceleration has effectively acted as a difficulty booster. With hash power continuing to climb, analysts project that difficulty could once again reach new highs, potentially surpassing 149 trillion, assuming current conditions persist until the next adjustment, expected around January 8, 2026.

The network’s hash rate, which measures the total computational power available to secure the network, continued to increase throughout much of 2025. It reached over 1,150 EH/s at its highest point in October before gradually declining later in the year. Even with that slight dip, hash power is still significantly higher than it was in January.

Big companies and miners with industrial-scale operations have been driving this expansion, thanks to the use of expensive ASIC equipment and inexpensive power sources.

Bitcoin difficulty rises and falls with mining power

Difficulty serves as Bitcoin’s only safety valve at the protocol level. Blocks cannot be added too quickly, which ensures predictable issuance and helps maintain network stability.

The mining challenge is recalibrated every 2,016 blocks, roughly every 10 minutes at the current hash rate. Bitcoin’s decentralized consensus not only resists certain attacks but also provides resilience, making the network disaster-tolerant.

Greater difficulty also means that it takes more electricity and computer power to unlock each block. This can be margin-pressured, and with volatile price action on Bitcoin, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to support the network as electricity costs rise – a challenge in maintaining network strength amid heightened activity. The network is stabilized with minor oscillations.

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