Bitcoin Hashrate Falls After All-Time High as Miners Face Tight Profit Pressure
Just days after hitting a record high hashrate, the Bitcoin network is now seeing a significant drop in computing power, raising concerns about miners’ profitability as operating costs remain high. The situation reflects an emerging imbalance in the Bitcoin mining ecosystem, as BTC prices stagnate while technical and economic factors exert pressure simultaneously.
From All-Time High to Slowdown
Over the weekend, the Bitcoin network hit an all-time high hashrate of 946 exahashes per second (EH/s), according to the seven-day moving average (SMA). This is an unprecedented milestone, marking a period of extremely strong miner activity.
However, just a few days later, on June 14, the hashrate plummeted to 880 EH/s, a drop of more than 66 EH/s or about 66,000 petahashes per second. This move represents a major adjustment in mining activity, which could be due to both technical and economic factors.
Difficulty Adjustment and Increased Block Times
Prior to the hashrate drop, the Bitcoin network underwent a difficulty adjustment at block height 901152, which saw a modest 0.45% decrease. While not technically significant, combined with the current average block time rising to 10 minutes and 31 seconds, well above the ideal 10 minutes, this increases the likelihood that the system will automatically adjust the difficulty further during the next adjustment on June 28. Current estimates suggest a reduction of around 5.05%, but this could change depending on developments in the coming days.
The decrease in hashrate, coupled with the increased block time, signals a period of network slowdown. This typically occurs when mining profitability is no longer attractive enough to maintain the same intensity of activity, forcing some miners to suspend or scale back their operations.
Profits Squeezed Amid Stable BTC Prices
From mid-May to mid-June, the USD value of a petahash (hash price) fell 4.37%, from $54.91 to $52.51. While the drop is not large, in the mining industry, which is notorious for thin margins, the change is enough to impact overall profitability, especially for small-scale operators or those using older equipment.
This comes as Bitcoin is currently hovering around $104,000, having remained virtually unchanged for the past few days. With BTC prices not rising enough to offset rising mining costs (electricity, operations, maintenance), miners are in a particularly difficult position following the recent halving, which cut block rewards in half.
Dynamic Equilibrium: The Unending Challenge of the Mining Industry
The Bitcoin mining industry operates in a cycle of constant adjustment. As profits increase, more miners join, pushing the hashrate up, causing the difficulty to adjust accordingly. As profits decrease, inefficient miners are forced to stop, causing the hashrate to drop and the difficulty to adjust downward to maintain a stable block production rate.
The current hashrate decline is a clear demonstration of this cycle, and can be seen as a healthy self-regulation signal for the network. However, it also reflects the harsh reality that miners face in a market with no clear upward trend: high input costs, decreasing rewards, and increasingly fierce competition.
A Look Ahead
Unless Bitcoin prices rise sufficiently in the near term or there are breakthrough improvements in mining technology (such as higher-performance ASICs), the wave of adjustment in the mining industry will continue. Financially or technologically weaker miners will be forced to exit, leaving room for leaner, lower-cost operators.
Meanwhile, upcoming difficulty adjustments may provide temporary relief, but they will not reverse the overall trend unless BTC prices recover strongly. Investors and miners are waiting for fresh impetus from ETF news, global monetary policy, or a recovery in macro markets to help break the current equilibrium.
In the meantime, the Bitcoin network continues to operate stably, but behind the scenes, there is a quiet battle for efficiency, capacity, and resilience among those who help maintain the infrastructure pillars of the world's largest cryptocurrency.