Bitcoin Difficulty Plays Hard to Get: 3.87% Up as Miners Eye AI Instead

After the previous difficulty epoch delivered a 7.76% reduction, Bitcoin's difficulty moved higher by 3.87% at block height 943488. This latest adjustment represents the third increase recorded so far this year. The network isn't exactly making it easy for miners to earn their satoshis—it's basically playing hard to get.

The network has logged a total of seven adjustments this year, comprising three increases and four decreases. The most recent reduction, two weeks ago, was sizable, arriving after consecutive gains of 14.73% and 0.45% across the prior two epochs. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster, if that rollercoaster was designed by someone with a grudge against ASIC operators.

Following the latest adjustment, the difficulty rating now stands 3.87% higher, making blocks that much harder to discover. It further sits at 138.97 trillion times more difficult than Bitcoin's launch. To put that in perspective: finding a block now requires more effort than convincing your family that yes, you really do understand what a hash function is.

As of 4 p.m. Eastern time, 181 of the 2,016 blocks in the current epoch have been mined, placing the network roughly 9% of the way toward the next adjustment expected on April 19, 2026. Current estimates point to a projected 14.27% reduction. So basically, we're in the opening credits of this epoch—plenty of time for hashrate to do something dramatic before the difficulty slides back down.

What's behind the shift? A decline in hashrate. On March 28, the Bitcoin network's total computational power had exceeded 1,000 exahash per second (EH/s), reaching 1,022 EH/s. It now sits 60.45 EH/s lower at 961.55 EH/s. That's roughly 6% of the network's muscle packing up and heading to what promises to be a more lucrative gym.

Compressed revenues are likely a key factor, alongside mining operations opting to allocate resources toward artificial intelligence infrastructure rather than mining $BTC in pursuit of stronger returns. An infrastructure provider deploying its megawatts toward AI rather than mining bitcoin can realize significantly higher returns, a dynamic that has persuaded many operators to redirect their focus. When AI companies are throwing around compute budgets like they're buying coffee, you can't really blame miners for at least considering a career change into prompt engineering.

A daily hashprice of $30.67 per petahash