Odaily Planet Daily reports: Bitcoin automatically adjusts mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks to maintain a target block time of approximately 10 minutes. If the batch of blocks is produced faster than planned, the difficulty increases for the next cycle; if slower, the difficulty decreases.
In February 2026, Winter Storm Fern caused major mining companies in key U.S. regions such as Texas to shut down operations, reducing Bitcoin’s hash rate from a previous peak of nearly 1.13 ZH/s to approximately 663 EH/s. On February 7, Bitcoin mining difficulty was lowered by 11.16%. Subsequently, miners came back online, and the hash rate rebounded to nearly 1 ZH/s; on February 19, network difficulty increased by 14.7%, rising to 14.44 trillion—the largest percentage increase since 2021.
On June 13, Bitcoin mining difficulty decreased by approximately 9.91%. At the time, Bitcoin’s price dropped by about 15%, prompting some publicly traded mining companies to shift mining equipment and data center capacity toward AI and high-performance computing workloads; as of late July, early data for the next difficulty adjustment suggests a potential decrease of around 1.2%. (bitcoin.com)