Bitcoin Hash Price Rebounds Strongly After Network Difficulty Sees Biggest Drop Since China's 2021 Mining Ban
Bitcoin's hash price has surged to a five-month high, surpassing $58.5/PH/s, thanks to a combination of surging BTC prices and the biggest network difficulty adjustment since China's 2021 mining crackdown. The move provides much-needed financial relief to miners, who have been facing months of increasingly tight margins.
According to data from crypto mining industry publication TheMinerMag, the recent difficulty adjustment saw a 7.4% drop, surpassing the 7.3% drop seen during the miner capitulation period in December 2022. This adjustment is the network’s response to a sustained decline in the 7-day average hashrate, largely driven by power cuts at mining farms in the United States, which are experiencing severe summer heat waves.
Foundry USA Pool, North America’s largest mining pool, has seen intermittent hashrate declines over the past few weeks, suggesting that large-scale power outages or operational curtailments may have been implemented to save money amid the harsh weather conditions and rising energy costs. However, as weather conditions began to stabilize and energy demand eased, signs of hashrate recovery emerged, helping to calm miners’ sentiment.
The hash price recovery is particularly significant as the majority of miners are operating at or below break-even following the April 2025 block reward halving, while transaction fees continue to plummet. As of June, transaction fees contributed just 1.062% of the block reward, a modest figure compared to previous peaks. In the past 24 hours, this ratio has dropped to 0.51%, placing additional pressure on miners who rely heavily on fixed block rewards.
With hash prices approaching $60/PH/s, some miners are now back in profit mode. However, industry experts still warn that the medium- and long-term profit outlook will depend heavily on factors such as energy costs, investment trends in new-generation mining machines, and the continued growth of the overall network hashrate, which could lead to a difficulty increase cycle in the near future.
In the event that the hashrate continues to recover strongly and steadily, it is likely that the network difficulty will be adjusted upward in the next round, putting pressure back on miner profits. Therefore, miners are currently taking advantage of this short-term "profit window" to optimize operations, reinvest in infrastructure, and prepare for more difficult scenarios ahead.
Overall, the recent developments mark a small but important turning point for the Bitcoin mining industry, which is trying to adapt to a new post-halving cycle of high costs and increasing performance requirements. If the hash price recovery trend is sustained, miners could regain confidence, drive technological innovation, and scale in a more sustainable manner.