A nearly 6% jump in one go: Bitcoin miners’ cushion is down to just 0.65%
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The Bitcoin network completed a difficulty adjustment this afternoon at block height 971712, raising mining difficulty across the network by about 5.9%. It’s the steepest increase since June 27, after difficulty had barely budged for nearly two weeks.
The key is the contrast: the previous adjustment, on October 3, was -0.03%—basically no change at all. This time, it jumped straight from almost zero to nearly 6%. For the same block reward, miners now have to do about 6% more work ⛏️
Difficulty now stands at 132.7 trillion. It has no unit; it’s simply a computational threshold. A 6% increase in difficulty means that, with the same hardware, miners have to make roughly 6% more attempts to find a block. Their share of the fixed amount of Bitcoin produced each day shrinks accordingly.
Even worse is the fee situation. Over the past 144 blocks, miners earned a total of 452.97 BTC: 450 BTC from block rewards and just 2.97 BTC from fees, or 0.65%. That averages 0.02 BTC per block. Fees for fast-confirmation transactions are now just 1 to 3 satoshis per byte, and the mempool is practically empty 💥
Here’s the contrast: when the chain is congested, fees can account for more than 10% of miners’ revenue. Back then, there was at least something to cushion a spike in costs. Not today. Since the April 2024 halving, the block reward has remained fixed at 3.125 BTC. Revenue is stuck, while costs have risen by nearly 6%.
Let’s do the math: 144 blocks a day, with block rewards totaling 450 BTC. At $82,298 per BTC, that’s about $37 million. Bitcoin’s daily trading volume is around $31.2 billion, so miners’ potential selling pressure amounts to only a little over one-thousandth of trading volume. That’s why a difficulty jump won’t, by itself, send prices crashing. What it really changes is whether a group of miners is willing to sell at these hotly contested price levels ⚠️
Looking at difficulty data from the past 12 months, increases of this magnitude have happened only twice: a 14.73% jump on February 19 and a 7.15% jump on June 27. The other 23 adjustments ranged from -10.09% to +4%. Statistically, this 5.9% increase is an outlier.
Miners have only two options: sell more coins to pay their electricity bills, or switch off their least efficient machines. The first creates an immediate increase in supply; the second will show up as a difficulty decrease at the next adjustment, 14 days later. So the pressure window is the next two weeks, not the next two hours.
My take: on the surface, this is a story about miners. At its core, it’s about Bitcoin’s marginal seller base becoming more fragile. When transaction fees are nearly zero, mining operations are left with just one lifeline: the price of Bitcoin 📉 If BTC stays range-bound in the low $80,000s for long enough, machines with high electricity costs will start going offline. In the short term, that means more supply; in the medium term, a reshuffling of hash power. This kind of squeeze tends to happen in the year and a half after every halving.
Do you think miners will sell their coins first or shut down their machines first? Let’s discuss in the comments 🦖
Tap the profile picture to watch the livestream.
Follow Bitcoin’s biggest stories with me every day—not just what’s happening, but the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀
🧭 群里聊方向
The Bitcoin network completed a difficulty adjustment this afternoon at block height 971712, raising mining difficulty across the network by about 5.9%. It’s the steepest increase since June 27, after difficulty had barely budged for nearly two weeks.
The key is the contrast: the previous adjustment, on October 3, was -0.03%—basically no change at all. This time, it jumped straight from almost zero to nearly 6%. For the same block reward, miners now have to do about 6% more work ⛏️
Difficulty now stands at 132.7 trillion. It has no unit; it’s simply a computational threshold. A 6% increase in difficulty means that, with the same hardware, miners have to make roughly 6% more attempts to find a block. Their share of the fixed amount of Bitcoin produced each day shrinks accordingly.
Even worse is the fee situation. Over the past 144 blocks, miners earned a total of 452.97 BTC: 450 BTC from block rewards and just 2.97 BTC from fees, or 0.65%. That averages 0.02 BTC per block. Fees for fast-confirmation transactions are now just 1 to 3 satoshis per byte, and the mempool is practically empty 💥
Here’s the contrast: when the chain is congested, fees can account for more than 10% of miners’ revenue. Back then, there was at least something to cushion a spike in costs. Not today. Since the April 2024 halving, the block reward has remained fixed at 3.125 BTC. Revenue is stuck, while costs have risen by nearly 6%.
Let’s do the math: 144 blocks a day, with block rewards totaling 450 BTC. At $82,298 per BTC, that’s about $37 million. Bitcoin’s daily trading volume is around $31.2 billion, so miners’ potential selling pressure amounts to only a little over one-thousandth of trading volume. That’s why a difficulty jump won’t, by itself, send prices crashing. What it really changes is whether a group of miners is willing to sell at these hotly contested price levels ⚠️
Looking at difficulty data from the past 12 months, increases of this magnitude have happened only twice: a 14.73% jump on February 19 and a 7.15% jump on June 27. The other 23 adjustments ranged from -10.09% to +4%. Statistically, this 5.9% increase is an outlier.
Miners have only two options: sell more coins to pay their electricity bills, or switch off their least efficient machines. The first creates an immediate increase in supply; the second will show up as a difficulty decrease at the next adjustment, 14 days later. So the pressure window is the next two weeks, not the next two hours.
My take: on the surface, this is a story about miners. At its core, it’s about Bitcoin’s marginal seller base becoming more fragile. When transaction fees are nearly zero, mining operations are left with just one lifeline: the price of Bitcoin 📉 If BTC stays range-bound in the low $80,000s for long enough, machines with high electricity costs will start going offline. In the short term, that means more supply; in the medium term, a reshuffling of hash power. This kind of squeeze tends to happen in the year and a half after every halving.
Do you think miners will sell their coins first or shut down their machines first? Let’s discuss in the comments 🦖
Tap the profile picture to watch the livestream.
Follow Bitcoin’s biggest stories with me every day—not just what’s happening, but the logic and opportunities behind it 👀🚀